Abstrct

Everyone has anxieties and fears, and Yiyi Tang created an installation drawing on imagery of mythical worlds and her reflections on fairy tales from eastern and western cultures to reproduce that moment.She comes from China. Her art is about her nightmare in the very first few days when she came to US. In a period she often awakened but unable to move. She feels her soul has run out of her body in her sleep.  It floats to the top of her room and looks at her body laying in the bed. She is unable to distinguish which part is real and which is not. She sees three of herself. Which one is really her? The other figures and the eyes are watching. She is confused and scared. This moment reflects her real life. She has moved to a new place and feels displaced, sad and unease, but is not as sad as people think.  This is her story or is it a dream?

She wish to reproduce this feeling and story of her. As for her, this is the first time in her life, that huge changes take place in terms of environment, emotion and personal character. By reviewing the past, she might be able to pass her feelings at those times to other people, so that people with similar experience could find things in common from her story. And people with entirely different backgrounds could get to know “her” better, or get to know this community that she represent. She inquired many Chinese friends of her, not only those studying abroad in America, but also those in U.K., Italy, France, etc., or those friends married to husbands from other countries, and those working in other countries. They share the same feeling with her more or less. She believe many people travelling or living overseas would be able to share this feeling with her when they perceive the awkwardness, helplessness and absurdness carried in her work. Even though my audience mainly comes from western countries, despite the western education they receive, she think the elements she choose still create the feeling of contradiction and dilemma, so as to bring them into my scenario

Ambivalence

Key words of my project:
 Odd
Ambivalence
Gray
Fairy tale
Alienation

I am an international student. I feel exciting and fresh when I came to US. But in the mean time I also lack the sense of belonging that I'm afraid of the new place. This kind of ambivalence go with me for now. I suddenly realized that how I always do things in ambivalence way. Like skydiving. It's scary for me. But I will still do it. This kind of ambivalence comes from my culture background and education. In traditional Chinses culture, we prefer to be a normal person. The "normal" here means don't be different from others. Don't be special. And also required us do things that you don not like to do.But I love arts and I learn it from childhood. In art world, we prefer to be special. Do what you like to do. I grow up in these two totally different values.
I awalys try to escape the traditional culture values but I can not. That is the reason of why I'm ambivalence.

I will present this kind of ambivalence in my project. I choose doll to be main element. Dolls in normal values are used to be symbolize pretty and cute. But I'm going to built an odd satge with cute dolls. The first big satge will be bulid by mushroom and three dolls. These three dolls are stand or sitting around the mushroom. They are in same space but they looks alone. I have the same feeling like them. I do not live alone, but I feel alone. The mushroom present the world you know and you do not know. The second and third stage is stand for the feeling when you sit in your own world. I use tiny dolls to creat tiny stage.

I'm looking at Takanori Aiba and Katsuya Kamo these days.

I choose the walkway space to display my project. The big one stage will be in the middle of the walkway sapce and on the floor. Another two little stage will be hanging on the wall.

Review of Jill Raymudo

Jill Raymundo, second year student of Columbus College of Art and Design’s Masters of Fine Arts, pointed out the concept of "The experience of looking is one of moving continually between the rhythms of witnessing and of realizing what is being witnessed. "

She practiced to attention at a broken fountain out of her front door . It is a negation for fountain itself and that kind of thing explored her "interest in the potentiality of what is there and the potentiality of imagined space. "

Then she began to focus on her home in Manila Philippines. She collected different stuff to explor the history, personal trajectories,fictional mythologies, even neighborhood history and social process. She found some wood pieces and videos are like a painting which the way she familiar to resolve the subject.

She also made a video mix the cities of Vancouver and Manlia, where  she was born and where she is a citizen. She lives in Columbus now and these three different homes are slowly look like same.

This is an great project to built a virtual time, history of a family and world, a relationship or social process through witnessing! She's still expanding research range and places.

Next stage

I got many feedback about sample of tiny stage.
Mushroom and doll are selected by most people.
So I choose these two elements to creat my next stage.

sample

GAZING

I am going to create an space that is filled with eyeballs. I want my audience feel uncomfortable that be watched by someone. Then they leave this space and walk into next room. There is a small box in middle of the next room. They can see the scene through a hole on the box. The box is also full of eyeballs. At that moment, angle of thinking changed that their eyeball will become one of eyeballs in the last space.

I also need feedback from my audience, keep going do yourself in that atmosphere or can not move under gazing.

I made an sample that I can see does it work and how to improve it.

NOT KNOWING!

I visited a doll designer's solo exhibition in Japan. The designer’s name is Mari Shimizu and the atmosphere of the exhibition shocked me.Although It is negative , dark, and dazzling, it is also enjoyable, I was deeply attracted by it.For a while I've been thinking about the difference between what I want to do next and what I need to do.As you know, I choose the female theme because of my personal experience.I feel the negative social energy pressed on women.

I hope this semester I can build my own atmosphere like Mari Shimizu does. I already have an idea coming from the chapter of GAZING in previous year. Despite of common perspective, no matter how art works emphasizes the feminism , they are unable to ignore the male perspective. At one point I choose the study of feminism and continues the study, but sometimes I will think that as I never heard anyone calling for male chauvinism, then the whether the feminism itself will strengthen the patriarchal impression again? The females obtain their rights under the gaze of male, and but are still not aware of it.

Do women also deny their feminine image and place themselves in a negative and weak position? Is the so-called Feminism also under the governance of men’s view? Does the real equality in between men and women exist or not?

Carrying these questions, I begin to particularly pay attention to daily dialogues and phenomena. 

The father taught the son at his childhood that crying equals to weakness and feminine behavior. And the son received the message that “women are the weak while I’m not; I’m a man so I’m powerful”. What is worth more reflection from us is that, a mother would have said the same thing under this same situation.

When men grow up, father will often encourage son like “stand straight and be a man”. “Be a man” once again directly confirms men’s status. What’s also worth attention is, the mother or even the son’s girlfriend will say the same thing at this occasion. Our grandmas, mothers and girlfriends all grew up under the governance of men’s view. Even if they often yelled for equality between male and female, but unconsciously they also became the promoters of patriarchal society.

Regardless of the intensive discussion of issues like male-female equality, I believe the same problem exists widely in many vulnerable groups, such as elderly people living alone, low-income people, sex workers and so on. I think everyone can get inspiration from my studies.

I want to express the feeling in sculpture. I want to use sculpture to build the atmosphere that we cannot escape from .

I also need feedback from my audience, keep going do yourself in that atmosphere or can not move under gazing.

A few weeks ago, I was still thinking about could audience get accurate dark. Will it be like David Lynch? Serious anddark? Or like Quentin Tarantino as simple and crude?

But from my perspective, I want to express that someone gazed at your face in darkness like thriller.
They are different dark between Cult movie and thriller. The sex and violence in some movie like Quentin Tarantino's are also dark for me. I still have no accurate answer of dark and actually there's no only answer.

I know exactly what I want to do, but I do not know how to do it best.

I have to say NOT KNOWING gave me a great help that “Just do it” is the best answer.

So I m going to start making. I must find my dark in processes.