Mengwei Ma Blurs the Bounds of Reality

On a Sunday afternoon in the cold, milky light of late March, Mengwei Ma, a visual arts fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, is making a film in the Province Lands off Snail Road. Cherrie Yu, another FAWC fellow, lies in the dip behind the first dune, pretending to sleep. Wind lifts white poplin. Cold numbs bare feet. The horizon looks a little off, like something half-remembered.

Nearby, five people move quietly, murmuring cues, steadying the boom, and adjusting camera lenses. Around them, the sand is filled with shallow craters — the aftermath of a previous 14-take scene. The mood is hushed, careful, and a little otherworldly.

The camera, focused on Yu, starts rolling. From just off-camera, Elena Kovylyaeva calls out, “Why are you eating sand?” and then, “You don’t have to eat sand.” Yu sits up, blinks, and crawls away.

Ma scans the playback monitor as if she’s looking for a loose thread. Her short film, Cherry and Chestnut, is still taking shape. Conceived in January in rough scratchings on parchment, it’s coming to life with help from four other visual arts FAWC fellows: José De Sancristóbal is Ma’s director of photography; Carlos Arturo Zerpa is her producer; Yu plays Cherry, the protagonist; and Kovylyaeva plays a spectral presence — her face won’t appear on screen, only her feet and her voice, with her lines to be dubbed later in Mandarin. Like much of Ma’s work, the film blurs the lines between real and imagined, ritual and routine.