Contemporary Visual Artist
Critical Reflection and Progress
1. Archive Co-operation
In the Unit 2 courses, I had the opportunity to work with one of my Computational Arts classmates, Yinuo Chu, on a project about archival research. After a group discussion and based on our common interests and concerns, we decided to start our research based on our shared feelings and stories.
The story began with a broken order. Both of us have felt a moment of disrupted equilibrium. Because of the eight-hour time difference between China and the United Kingdom, there were always people at the end of the night in the daytime, and we felt the disruption of day and night in a trance, the disruption of our memories, and we were stuck in a loop. The normal order is to enter in sequence like an underground train pulling into a station; disorder is like entering a Möbius loop, so we begin to look for ways to restore order and find familiarity. The time difference between the two ends of the day and the night makes us lose our sense of familiarity, and we feel that our cats at home become the link between us and our families. We began to think about ways to restore order, and the study of biology became the starting point for our search for balance.
Our understanding of Archive is that it is a collection of popular memories that are more authoritative. We initially chose to visit the Hunterian Museum for our research, where we saw the growth of foetus at multiple months of age. This is an order of growth, a collection born for medical research. The exhibits are presented in a specific order in the archive, both to fulfil the needs of scientific research and to preserve this important memory.
We also visited The Viktor Wnyd‘s Museum of Curiosities, where we documented some completely out-of-order, imaginary archives, or fake archives. Mermaid specimens spliced together according to myths, imagined two-headed babies, twisted skeletons, writing love letters, unconventional Miniature human skeletons, these are all archives found in real museums.
We often have the feeling that something is obviously familiar, but when it appears in a different way,it is difficult to connect together. Instances such as a human body solely comprised of a blood system, a chest cavity stripped down to bare bones, or gloves resembling flesh and blood devoid of skin all evoke a rational yet unsettling visual impact.
This is an effect we consider to be strangeness. In the exhibition at the VA Museum's Photography gallery we found some x-ray photographs of frogs growing up. Although they are realistic records of tadpoles and frogs proper, by looking at the x-ray photographs, it is hard for us to relate the creatures in the photographs to the frog that was photographed anymore.
We found many wandering away from order, so we undertook a quest to find familiarity. There are tales of people going into walkabout when they are near death, finding order, being able to place themselves in an order, such as a public, collective, order that is subsumed into an archive, a collective memory. The dislocation of memories leads to a feeling of inverted identity, as if another self were surviving on our behalf, like twins who are in a different place but have a strong telepathic connection. We can sense each other, but the memories don't have the feeling of being in person.
At the same time, we have studied different forms of twinning, such as the split soul, the reflection of the modern and the past, the complete and incomplete selves, a pair of twins who, despite their similarity in form, have a missing part of the other side, interconnected in order to reach a complete chain of order.
We have investigated the ways in which objects can be strangled, one of which is the viewing method, Xray, which looks at the structure of the object to find the integrity, a method that achieves a similar effect to that achieved by the blue tanning process. We also came up with the idea of disassembling the structure of unusual items. From the disassembled parts, we return to the whole, filling in the memory gaps and familiarising the memory in a small to large way.
2. Further research
Continuing my research on the themes I chose for this Unit's archival collaborative project, I have thought more about identity and memory in the context of my own experiences.
As an adult since the age of 18, I chose to study in the United States for five years for my undergraduate degree and then came to the United Kingdom for my postgraduate degree, during which time I did not return to China very often. Although living and studying abroad for many years is a common phenomenon internationally, for me as a homebody, I often struggle with longing for my family and hometown. When I was packing for my first trip abroad, I secretly put one of my mum's hair clips in my suitcase without her knowing about it. The hairpin was a hair accessory that my mother wore on her head in an old photo of her holding me when I was a child. I've been studying abroad for many years, and this hair clip has been with me all the time. Although it is not an important item or something she uses often, I always feel that she is by my side with me.
The Meaning of Things:
Domestic Symbols and the Self.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Rochberg-Halton, E.
(1981).
“Psychologists have long recognized the primary role that peo.ple, and parental figures in particular, have in shaping the developing self, Every theorist, from Freud to Mead, from Erikson toPiaget, emphasizes the importance of the infant's early relationswith his or her caretakers as the most significant source of information from which the selfemerges. It is, ofcourse, true that themother is the most powerful, and usually the most responsivesource of information for the newborn. Parents, siblings, andlater, peers can provide exquisitely detailed or alternatively all-in-clusive feedback, if for no other reason than that the self can bestbe confirmed or negated by language-communication withothers. To say “I love you" to someone implies a validation of hisor her self that no amount of dancing mobiles can give.Yet'the impact of inanimate objects in this self-awarenessprocess is much more important than one would infer from itsneglect.'Things also tell us who we are, not in words, but by em-bodying our intentions. In our everyday traffic of existence, wecan also learn about ourselves from objects, almost as much asfrom people.”
In ‘The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self’, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton explore how domestic objects act as symbols, influencing an individual's self-identity and social relationships. The study shows that objects are not only functional but also symbolic, influencing an individual's self and identity.
Coinciding with the Chinese New Year in London this year, my mobile phone was robbed. I had both my UK and China SIM cards inserted into that phone. It's easy to replace a SIM card for a UK phone number, but the SIM card for Chinese phone number is tied to my ID and bank card information in China, as well as almost all of my clothing, food, housing, travelling and living information software in China. It's very troublesome to replace these contents, and even some of the information may never come back. It made me feel terrible as if I had lost part of my personal identity of Chinese in the UK.
So, in the initial stage, I chose to try to collect some objects that have had an effect on my own feelings. And intend to combine these objects in a blue-tanning way to create the effect of an X-ray film. From this, I started some brainstorming.
3. Copeland Gallery Exibition
The work of Japanese photographer Rinko Kwauchi has had a deep impact on me. With a knack for capturing fleeting images and nuanced representations of everyday life in soft tones, Rinko Kwauchi's style is subtle and delicate yet powerful, moving and captivating.
Rinko Kawauchi
“Rinko’s photography focuses on the ordinary things in life, such as a blossoming flower, a wave crashing on the beach, or an egg hatching. As captured by Rinko, these passing moments, often too ordinary to notice in everyday life, are transformed into the realm of the extraordinary. By capturing life in flux, Rinko explores the line between life and death. There is a sense of melancholy which often lingers behind her photographs. Her works embrace impermanence and perceive joy and melancholy in the natural world. Her images have the power to still the mind and reveal the marvellous in the transient and imperfect world around us.”
——By Kitty Becher
I incorporated my thoughts about my grandmother during my time in China and the UK into my work and chose to title the photographs ‘Whisperings’ for the Copeland Gallery exhibition. For the printing, I chose to use Awagami Inbe Thin White, a very thin handmade paper. For the exhibition, I chose to use slightly thicker nails through the corners of the paper and staple it to the wall. The deliberate distance between the wall and the works and the choice of paper were intended to create a sense of lightness, echoing the theme of ‘Whisperings’. In terms of the layout of the exhibition, I have broken up the initial arrangement of the photographs into a scattered and irregular arrangement to create a visual fluidity, and I also hope that the works will be able to have a dialogue with the viewers so that they can feel the emotions that I have expressed in the works.
In terms of the layout of the exhibition, I have broken up the initial arrangement of the photographs into a scattered and irregular arrangement to create a visual fluidity, and I also hope that the works will be able to have a dialogue with the viewers so that they can feel the emotions that I have expressed in the works.
3. More Experiments
After the exhibition at Copeland Gallery, I returned to the theme of my previous research and tried to create a sense of strangeness with the most common objects around me. Whenever I feel confused about my identity in a foreign country, I feel a sense of self-division, which is often cold. I chose to experiment with the eggs around me, ice cubes and a photo that expresses myself.
For the first set of experiments, I printed the photographs on a printer that was out of ink cartridges and immersed them in ice water.
For the second set of experiments, I still chose to flatten the objects. I used a blue frosted acrylic plate and ice cubes placed on a scanner for scanning. The acrylic plate created a haze for the presentation of the image. I moved the ice in varying degrees as I scanned to express my feelings of self-circumcision.
In the third set of experiments, I used Cyanotype process to place ice cubes in broken and split eggshells in an attempt to leave traces of the refraction of light on the ice with the eggshells. The results of this set of experiments on multiple attempts were not what I expected. When I designed the experiment, I neglected to consider the speed at which the ice melted in the sunlight and the damage that would be done to the final image by the accumulation of water from the melted ice in the eggshells. I tried different interventions such as letting the ice melt, placing ice cubes on a bright acrylic plate (which slides and affects the imaging traces), constantly wiping up the accumulated water, and wrapping the ice cubes in cling film (which affects the refraction of light). Eventually, some of the traces were visible in some of the eggshells. I placed them on the tiles of my bedroom, which I know best on a daily basis, for the final photograph.
In Unit 3, I will continue my research on identity, but from the perspective of the Chinese family.