unit3 Process and reflection
Mind mapping and research
As I continued to expand on this project, I became interested in this concept of the plant cell. The key words in my research project were death, emotions and pain. When I discovered that in plants they have an amazing ability to regenerate it forced me to look deeper into them. I then cut and spliced them together and made some notes on the idea of cellular rebirth. In the process of thinking I would draw some hand-drawn inspiration alongside. This is to assist my mind to spread more.
During my research into psychological painful emotions, I discovered that many psychological emotions are externalised to our skin or face. So I was interested in this and wondered if a tiny cell could have emotions, happy or unhappy, which would be interesting. I thought of my belly button and I observed that when I was in a bad mood my belly button would hold down. When I was in a good mood it would go back to its original shape. I was very curious about this, and not just the belly button. It's not just the belly button, it's the folds in the skin that are different too. So I photographed a lot of people's belly buttons and recorded their emotions at the time, and I found that my thoughts on this were traceable. So I put them all together and looked at them, and again they looked like all kinds of mushrooms. The idea of mushroom fungus was quite sudden. But I thought it was interesting to connect these two unrelated things .
Sketch
These are the sketches I usually do as I go along. Before I start a project I do a lot of sketches in a small notebook, basically every day I draw whenever I have an idea. Then I focus on organising them, and often my drawings are made up of several small drafts. These two sketches were made after I studied how mental emotions affect the human body. As well as writing some key words and notes about the externalisation of emotions. I think a lot of the time the human body is very much like a container that can hold a lot of different emotions. When we approach the limit of what we can hold, it is likely that these emotions will externalise onto our skin or our bodies.
Behavioural experiments
It was a particularly difficult behavioural experiment. It was a piece of cloth eight metres long with my scarred skin printed on it. My original idea was probably to have this large piece of scarring floating around in different locations . This idea did not include any interaction with the audience. It turned out that during the curatorial process there was a printer in the space just below where I had placed it. So at the suggestion of my mentor I put the end of a cloth with my skin on it into the printer. This way everyone could print my skin and even take it away. Take away my wounds . This was the most amazing part of the experiment. Throughout the exhibition there were visitors who came in with paper with my skin printed on it and watched the exhibition. After leaving the exhibition there is no telling where these skins will go. They could be anywhere, and this uncontrollability is what makes this performance experiment so exciting and interesting. This was not anticipated and in this work the audience and the whole gallery became part of my work. It developed into an immersive exhibition experience.
All the contingencies in the process of the experiment were part of the work itself, including the behaviour of the audience, and the installation process was a revolutionary reflection.
Development of the exhibition of previous works
In an exhibition there are often unimaginable contingencies due to the environment. For example, in this gallery there is a whole glass wall at the back. There is no way to nail the works that need to be on the wall to the glass wall. After many conversations with the curator, many solutions were tried. At first, we planned to hang the candle cabinets from a wire, but during the hanging process one of the wires broke because the cabinets were too heavy. For the safety of all, the curator's suggestion was to use a stand to secure the floor of the candle cabinet to the stand.
In fact, the two different ways of presenting the work, using a stand and hanging it in the air, had a great impact on the work. It also gives a different impression. The different forms of exhibition have in fact changed the tone of the exhibits at the root. In fact, there are sparks in this collision, and in many cases the new experimentation gives the work some new perspectives to interpret and make sense of it.
This is a development of the previous project. Here it is also an experiment. The salt used before was replaced by rice, which was considered to have a corrosive effect on the floor of the exhibition hall, so it was replaced by rice. The rice is covered with red paint with red dots, which gives it a more ancient religious feel.
Fan experiment
This is an idea that did not materialise in the exhibition. My idea before the exhibition was to have the painting floating in the air with the wind. In the process of realising this idea I had the idea of putting a motorised fan with a cranked head underneath the painting, so that the fan would blow Juan's painting up. But in real practice a number of problems arose. For one thing, although Juan is very light, my painting was too big and nearly 3 metres long. In many places the fan could not blow on it at all, which resulted in the painting blowing up in a very unattractive way. The curator and I adjusted it numerous times during the process. This included creating a bellows on the wall but the effect was still not ideal. In the end, I thought it would be better to open the window and let the natural wind blow. Although the effect of natural wind is very good, there are still force majeure factors. For example, if there is no wind at all on the day of the exhibition, the effect of the exhibition will be directly affected by the weather. This also makes it difficult and unstable to exhibit the work.
Attempts at drawing and professional skills
The transition from paper to silk is particularly painful. First of all, silk has a slight texture on it which is not as smooth as paper, so it requires a lot of changes to previous techniques and habits when painting. It is also very thin, so I did not use soft brushes as in traditional painting. I painted with coins. So this makes it very difficult to paint. It is very easy to break the cloth because of the strength of the brush. The only way to practise the strength is to keep trying to get the wrist familiar with the average strength of the brush on silk.
In my paintings there are often fragments, broken limbs and bodies. I try to use this form to express and explore a distressing psychological emotion. I also try to use this metaphor to evoke certain psychological emotions in people and in the viewer. Through this careful painting technique the broken organs give a sense of fragmented dream memories, even some painful memories. The process of recollection is fragmented.
In this series of paintings I have experimented with the material graphite powder. What attracted me to this material was the fact that it has a lot of chance and uncertainty in its mechanism. In the process of painting the mechanism, the amount of water and gum added has a direct impact on the final result. So it took me several drafts to get to grips with the properties of graphite. It took me several drafts to master the properties of graphite and to control the desired mechanism. Water is a very important technique in the process of drawing with this material. I have also watched videos and lecture courses on the use of this material by artists in order to learn it better.
Artist talks attended
In November I attended a lecture by Shirin in Florence, Italy. Shirin Nashat is an Iranian female visual artist known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her early artistic work was politically charged and more abstract in its cinematic narrative, focusing on gender, identity and social issues, creating themes that revolve around the contrast between Islam and the West, women and men, public and private life, and between the ancient and the modern, and linking these themes. She adopts a magical realist art form that is very different from traditional Muslim art to critique the ills of religious secularism in contemporary Muslim countries.
The inscriptions written on the faces of the women in Rebel Silence, for example, are taken from Tahereh Saffarzadeh's poem Allegiance with wakefulness, which covers themes such as martyrdom and revolutionary women. Most of these photographs feature Nashat herself, dressed in a black robe and with Persian poetry written on her face, hands and feet, and her body is photographed in part or in its entirety through different angles.
I also came across an interview with Giuseppe Penone while doing research for my project. I felt that some of the ideas he spoke about were very much in line with my project as well. Giuseppe Penone's work is constantly absorbing elements of nature, enhancing the concrete, visual, tactile and olfactory qualities, in order to explore magical and wonderful ways of art. He has always used unconventional materials such as lead, copper, wax, tar and wood, sometimes invoking natural elements such as limescale, rain and sun. The notion of cyclic repetitive movements that he mentioned in the interview as bringing an extension of the imagination to the work is very interesting. As well as the meditative realm he mentions, he creates rituals in these movements. I have always thought of art making as a ritualistic and performative endeavour. So the biggest inspiration for me in this interview was his reflective thinking in his creative process.
Career Paths
After these exhibitions for the public, I have gained a deeper understanding of my own work. I have also heard a lot of good and bad feedback from the audience. The most impressive feedback I heard during these public exhibitions was from a couple who had seen my paintings. They felt that my paintings were particularly heavy and they felt a sense of suffocation several times. But in the course of talking to me, they found out that I don't really have that much pain in my life. They were curious as to why I paint the way I do. The curiosity and thought that it evokes in the audience is something I did not expect. I also received some pertinent comments during the project, for example, many people felt that my work conveyed the emotions, but the images themselves were too personal, so it was difficult to relate to them to a large extent. This is a question that has always troubled me, whether I should be a marketable artist or stay true to myself. But I would undoubtedly choose the latter. I believe that the artist is the carrier of the artwork, and that his or her personality and ideas are reflected in the artwork, so remaining unique is the long-term way to survive in the art market.
ZENG