Cui, Yi is a Chinese media artist. Her practice is rooted in process and collaboration. She engages time-based forms as a way of listening, thinking and relating. Through her evolving framework of “Migrating Cinema”, she explores intersections between grassroots filmmaking, expanded cinema, traveling projection, and ancient screen arts such as shadow theatre. 

Since 2013, Yi has worked closely with communities in Eastern Tibet, supporting local audiovisual creation by herding families, monastic filmmakers, and students. These sustained relationships have deeply shaped her artistic approach, emphasizing situated knowledge, mutual learning, and media-making as a relational, open-ended process. Her recent work To Alexandra emerges from this ongoing dialogue, reflecting a collaborative effort with members of the Tibetan community.

Her work has been presented at exhibitions and film festivals in Asia, Europe, and North America, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Images Festival, Viennale, Ji.hlava IDFF, Message to Man, and Cinéma Vérité in Iran. It has received recognition including the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Libraries’ Award at Cinéma du Réel, and is held in the audiovisual collection of the Bibliothèque publique d’information at Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Yi currently teaches at Colgate University in New York state, USA.

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