Li Xinmo spent her childhood under the shadow of her father. Her alcoholic, irascible father traumatized her. When she was 19 years old, her father went out one winter night and never came back. After that, her father became a void in her life. For many years, he kept appearing in her dreams, becoming a nightmare she could not escape from. In 2012, at the age of 36, she created a performance painting titled "Ashes" as a farewell to the past 36 years. She used a brush to write 36 letters on rice paper, each recording the events of a specific year, and then placed these letters on 36 canvases and set them on fire. The traces left on the canvases by the burning rice paper flames formed each image.
