The MengCheng 梦城团 Collective includes Thandi Cai, LiLi Nacht, the late Neena Wang, and Yidan Zeng.
Thandi Cai | www.thandicai.com | @cai_in_the_sky
Thandi Cai (they/them) is a queer, Indonesian Chinese American artist from the American South whose interdisciplinary work—spanning film, textiles, performance, design, and print media—explores the futures of Asian diasporic identity. Rooted in social engagement, their practice challenges colonial systems of gender, borders, and capital through imagination, pleasure, and speculative storytelling. Cai is currently immersed in Bluff City Chinese, a documentary and archive project amplifying Chinese American histories in Memphis in partnership with the Chinese Historical Society of Memphis & the Midsouth.
LiLi Nacht | www.lilinacht.com | @lili.nacht
LiLi 丽丽 Nacht is a Chinese American artist, educator and curator. Her work is rooted in meditation, ritual, Daoist/Buddhist practice, and 山水 (shan shui or mountain water) ink painting traditions. Nacht creates environments, abstract forms and fluid compositions that transcend the literal, inviting viewers into a space of reflection and connection with their inner world. Her work also engages with social practice, creating opportunities for people to gather and explore the tensions between chosen vs. inherited identities, reimagine historical narratives, and foster collective unlearning.
Neena Wang | www.neenawang.com | @neenaneen
Neena Wang 王媛 (1995-2025) was a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spanned sculpture, ceramics, glass, painting, curation, installation, and performance to imagine alternative futures and create them into the present. Her work drew from ancestral storytelling and dream imagery, and the collective unconscious to challenge dominant narratives and construct emergent mythologies.
Yidan Zeng | www.yidanzeng.com | @yidan_zeng
Yidan Zeng 曽一丹 (they/them) is a queer, Chinese American artist raised by Guangzhou, China and Memphis, TN stitching together text/iles, performance, and ancestral rituals toward an embodied practice of attention and care. They use the relational as both material and site of research, exploring the body as a portal to what we might not yet know. A graduate of the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program in Computer Science and Glass, they approach their work through both the lens of rules and instructions (how do we reprogram ourselves?) alongside playful attunement (how can we be more present?).
Artist Statement
MengCheng 梦城团 Collective (pronounced “muh-ng chuh-ng”) is an invitation into intergenerational dialogue, communal healing, and empowerment by sharing the Asian American experience of living in the Mid-South. MengCheng 梦城 “City of Dreams” is inspired by the Chinese phonetic name for Memphis, or 孟菲斯 mèngfēisī. As artists and makers who grew up in Memphis, Thandi Cai, LiLi Nacht, Yidan Zeng and the late Neena Wang formed this collective to challenge the way our cultural histories have been collected, disseminated, or made invisible. Through an art-making process centered around food, ritual, and gathering, they create spaces to involve the Southern Asian American community in their own archive making, healing, and resource building. We aim to create transformative processes that allow the Asian American community to not only see ourselves in the history and future of the Mid-South, but also to claim our agency in enacting change in the region.
$5,000.00
$50.00
