Wenqing Zhai (b.1998, Dalian, China) is an artist whose work explores how early childhood conditioning shapes individuals through play. Drawing on toys, puppets, fairy tales and other cultural artifacts of innocence, she reveals the subtle mechanisms through which power, desire, and hierarchy are taught under the disguise of make-believes. Her practice unpacks how manipulations, masked by charm, fantasy, and repetition, is woven into the formative structure of story-telling. Through this excavation, she searches for what else might be imagined once the original scripts are dismantled.