CRUSHING

Crushing

/ˈkrʌʃɪŋ/

adjective

causing overwhelming disappointment or embarrassment.
"the news came as a crushing blow"

Curatorial Rationale.

The theme of my exhibition centers around the intellectual, emotional, societal conflicts, in particular, the embarrassing ones, experienced by individuals, including myself, and societies and cultures. A reoccurring concept permeating my selected collection of the exhibition is 'Crushing', which means “causing overwhelming disappointment or embarrassment", according to Cambridge dictionary. Feminism, Philosophy, History, and Literature were also sources of my inspiration. Some of my visits to galleries and exhibitions, such as Tim Walker’s “Wonderful Things” at V&A museum in March 2020, and Cindy Sherman’s exhibition at National Portrait Gallery in September 2019, have fuelled my concepts, subject matter, aesthetics holistically.

My emotions from personal, entertaining, and social experiences were largely characterized in two pieces. My initial inspiration comes from the movie Joker, the literature The Man Who Laughs, and the Cindy Sherman exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, London. These all resonated deeply with my mental and emotional state at that time. Thus, I decided to do a disguise mixed-media drawing focusing on clowns in order to shed light on the repression of emotions of people. Another piece, The Great Noodles aimed to show my struggles during a busy school term. I depicted myself as a bold warrior sailing in the "noodle waves", which was adapted from Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut print. Asian culture and symbols are extensively employed to show my home-sickness as well as the various challenges, including overwhelming workload and interpersonal relationships, I experienced.

Feminism is linked to 3 pieces in my exhibition. My lino printmaking diptych A Maid with Pipa, acrylic painting Reflections, and fashion design Guitar Girl all demonstrate my understanding of feminist issues. Learned in my Anthropology lesson, Feminism for me is a continuous hardship for women over decades, and involves conflicts, causing disappointment, and sometimes embarrassment. I intentionally used relief lino print, painting, and textiles in order to emphasize that feminism campaigns can be in various forms and are powerful in all ways, inspired by Chinese artist Lin Fengmian, contemporary illustrator Camilla d’Errico and Cyril Rolando, and Korean Fluxus installation artist Nam June Paik after seeing his film installations at the Tate Modern museum.

The last two pieces selected are my film and large zoomorphic drawing responding to intellectual crushes. Dog is a charcoal drawing reflecting my investigation regarding Cynicism, illustrating the living condition of dogs, and my reflections are also included. Charcoal was used to showcase the squirming prostrate figure with a dog mask, which communicates disorder, pessimism, and embarrassment. I highlighted the conflicts experienced by the cynics, which is, excessive disappointment and embarrassment while being outrageous and rebellious inside. In particular, I famed it with white in order to contrast with the dark charcoal-drawn figure. My short film Crushing employed aesthetics of Neo Film Noir and Montage sequences, inspired by Frank Miller and Tim Walker (V&A museum 2020). My personal struggles with work and pressure, emphasizing cultural shock, internal conflict, etc experienced by myself were included. In particular, the obliged absorbance of knowledge is shown as me gorging on paper. Eerie background music and TV static effects were used to emphasize the unstable emotion.

In order to demonstrate the idea of the core theme “Crushing”, I chose a curatorial space with two sides, one of which is exposed to strong light and the other submerged in shadow. I intended to place those demonstrating emotional conflicts in the darker front and those illustrating intellectual conflicts in the brighter back. By employing the contrasting lit spaces, I can showcase the conflicts of various elements within my exhibition. The same themes are featured on the same side according to the lighting. For example, emotional conflicts are both displayed in the front, where there is less light while intellectual conflicts are largely exposed in stronger lit spaces. The selection of frames is also consistent with the light qualities. For example, my 3D mixed media The Great Noodle was framed without the glass shield so that the spectators can recognize the shadows of layers. Considering perspectives, I deliberately chose to hang most pieces slightly higher than the viewer’s perspective. However, I displayed my Dog piece, which contains a person lying like a dog, lower in relation to the viewer’s perspective. This is consistent with my intended viewer’s perspective and helps the viewers understand my theme more effectively. However, I placed my relief lino print higher up on the board to emphasize its spirituality as ‘antique’. I chose to place my exhibition board in the center of the exhibition hall in order to emphasize the theme of “Crushing”: a desire of showcasing my art is conflicted with the disappointment and embarrassment in my art.

Thank you for visiting!