Yulun Fan
Yulun Fan
Born in a traditional patriarchal society in China and raised in Singapore in my teenage years simply by my mom, I learned the unease of women from every corner of my life. When my mom is already a successful businessman who helps to work in my dad’s company, she is still struggling in finding her own value when stuck in the family. News that went viral recently in China discovered a woman who has been chained in her house. However, China did not take any action but was busy keeping down the voices by deleting people’s posts online. This news is just another piece of evidence showing that this country merely treats women as tools and commodities to give birth, but not humans who have rights. Last month, I got cyber-bullied on the Chinese tik tok after I supported a young female singer who caressed her body in her video. Over seven hundred comments flew to me and the majority laughed at or slut-shamed me for supporting the “sexual innuendo” she made. This experience has led to my reflection that the majority of the Chinese citizens are still not educated enough about the dangers of slut-shaming. My disappointment in Chinese society resulted in the discussion of women’s rights in this exhibition, and I wish the audiences will be able to realize the seriousness of this issue. From the presentation of my work, I hope people can understand that gender inequality is not just a concept we invented for political correctness. In fact, the women’s world is a hard mode in this male-dominated world.
In retrospect, although my family gives me respect and freedom, I was often told by my mother that I am not behaving elegantly, girls should sit with their legs joined and never swear. I have hated this kind of discipline since childhood. Why did my brother and I receive different disciplines? I didn't want to be held hostage to "girls should." Such stumbling ropes are made of restrictions, they are woven into dense cobwebs one by one. They asked every woman to receive self-dwarfing education from childhood. "You have to be obedient" so you can avoid harm. But even if we escaped from the web in front of us, we can’t escape from it all. Slut shaming is a trap designed for women and only by treating it in an invisible way can we escape from them. As slut-shaming is a particularly serious issue in Chinese society, this theme has been discussed in five of my pieces, in different mediums and ways of expression. In four of them, I explored linguistic humiliation. I chose to write different humiliated phrases and characteristics on my pieces as motifs, using eyeshadow, white pen, and digital pencil, depending on their mediums and contexts. I explored digital work, oil pastel, laser cutting, photography and cardboard, trying to give the audience different feelings and different visual effects. In the photograph project, I put on makeup and then used eyeshadow in writing the humiliated phrases, as heavy makeup is just one reason women tend to be accused of.
GIrls in Cans and the Claw Machine were examining the issue that “women are being treated as commodities in society”, and I used two different styles, one is dark and one is light. The Claw Machine should be the one that gives the audience a strong visual effect as the style is quite horrific, made by its coloring and the figures, so people can stay for longer and stay curious about the theme. Girls in Cans will be exhibited next to it, and the huge change in styles will raise the interest of audiences and spend a long time watching it and trying to figure out the theme behind it. In the Teddy Bear Project, the bear sits on a platform that allows it to be better presented. The broken arm will be placed on the floor, and some pieces sprayed in red will be spread around it, stimulating the senses of audience. In this exhibition, I hope my audiences can understand the unease of women’s lives in this patriarchal society, think about the unfairness towards genders they believed as normal in daily life and reflect if they have done any such humiliating acts toward women.