This work is based on a fictional voyage log the artist wrote featuring a female sailor accompanied only by her feline companion, Benjamin. Inspired by the journals of Captain Matthew Flinders describing his friendship with his ship cat Trim, Yuxuan has reimagined her own adventures. She leaves the attributes of masculinity, patriarchy, and colonial conquest behind and attends to the absence of women in these archives. From a female perspective, she recounts the bond formed with Benjamin through their shared experience of “escape” and rewrites their destiny on the sea. Benjamin becomes her closest, most dependable companion, with whom she shares time, space, memories and kinship.  

In crafting these narratives, Yuxuan often returned to a common Chinese phrase “同舟共济” meaning to sail alongside someone even in the face of hardship, towards a shared fate. This expression promotes sentiments of trust, solidarity and companionship that she aspires to in her rapport with Benjamin. Both the voyage and the relationship challenge her to seek true understanding, unity and connection, beyond even her own species.   

She wonders if it’s just a coincidence words like relationship, friendship, companionship and kinship all end in ship?