According to these three weeks project, finally, I finished my work several days before, while I decided to take a film so that there are still some work for me.

I have to say that this project pushed me hard to do something that I have never done before. I tried various ways to make textiles in this project. I wanted to use human’s body and organ as a reference to make some textiles which are seems like the similar texture but not the same when people check the details, then I did some experiments. For example, I used acrylic to dye some different kinds of fabric and paper, or I blended paper in piece then changed them into new texture. After all these works, I can not deny that this project always push me to try something new, to try something I have never thought that I can do before. During these period, there were also some problem I have met. For example,at the ‘Here’ project of this course, I did not have any inspiration while the tutor helped me a lot. She encouraged me to make some random thing, she said ‘we are always in the box, but those random things could take us to find out something out of the box’. I can still feel like she is remaining me to create something new all the time, whatever I do, wherever I am.

I did a lots of research from several artists and their artworks. Such as Reme Magritte’s works ‘lovers (Les Amants)’ , the cloth is covering lovers’ face as the main elements of the men and women kissing, yarn might be able to cover the facial features, but it can not covered the strong emotion. Because of the deliberate veil covering, the abstract love was highlighted instead. The outfit and the main shape of the cloth which were covered on lovers was inspired me, so I used plaster and fabric to cover on people’s head that symbolized the blind love, and imitate the shape of lovers head in Magritte’s paint.

Also, I was inspired by ‘Works with Ulay’ from Marina Abramović, which is one of my favorite female artist and actress. The atmosphere in her performance is really attractive, so that I was addicted in the setting of her work. In the project ‘Works with Ulay’, she mainly focus on the relationship between people. In my opinion, this collection also about the connection between lovers, because  Marina and Ulay were lovers during that term, these performance not only about the mutual understanding between people, but also present some disadvantage of such kind of close relationship. For example, in one of her work, Ulay and she kissed and breathed the air from each other, whereas they got coma after a while, because their lung were filled with the carbon dioxide. This work explored the destroyed ability of relationship. Then I found that there some similarities between Marina Abramović and Reme Magritte’s work, so I tried to combine them together to make the final look of my work and take a vedio of my performance.

Actually, I pretty like the outcomes when I finished it, but there are still some space to make improvement. Firstly, when I made textiles, the raw materials that I chose were limited, I intended to try some other materials in the future, instead of cloth. Secondly, the research that I have done was not enough, I wanted to so more research from other field like literature or history, not only the artworks.

1#What have your material investigations revealed?

I tried to use paper, bead, acrylic, woolen yarn and fabric to create several textiles, which imitate the texture of organs and muscle’s. Then I use plaster to make a mode of face and head. Please check more information and details about my work in my posts.

2#How do you want people to understand or engage when they look at your work?

This work is about the dark side of love, but actually I wish people could have their own thought about my project, because I have to say that my work is really obscure, thus everyone might gain totally different emotion from this work and have various thought about it. In my opinion, a good art work can not be too shallow. If all kinds of people have same thinking about a work, if this work can not develop diversity views, if this work only give people a typical answer instead of a open ended question, then it is not a good one. This project is about the dark side of love so I still hope people could feel some negative feeling when they look at my sculpture and vedio, such as sad, depress, painful. 

3#How do you intend to present your work to achieve this?

As you can see in the following picture.There is a sculpture, a vedio and a mirror.

In last week, I restart to thinking about the final outcome of my work. Firstly, I was not sure that I got enough time to finish it follow my first though. Secondly, I felt a little bit confused about whether this could present what I ant to say, because I was really afraid that people might focus too much on the details or the outlook of the work so that ignore the meaning inside.

So some details of the work had been changed during the making process. I simplified the shape of sculpture, removed the tassels, added a rough mirror which covered by diamond bead and pearls. Then I realized the way to illustrate my work is also important, I am making a vedio of this collection and it will be showed in exhibition.

I have to finish most of work in this week, especially the sculpture part. I asked my friends for some help, they help me to put on lots of face cream, then stick the plaster on my face. After eight to ten minutes, the plaster becomes dry and seems like mask of my face.

Here are some picture of making process. This is just the original mode, I plan to stick textiles on it by PVA glue after drying.

I was inspired form people’s organ structures like muscle and heart to make some textiles that I hope them could be similar as muscle’s texture but not the same, because while the textile become too real, people might pay too much attention on texture or not to understand the meaning of the work.

Here are some pictures of process below.

Some textiles that I made are showed as following.

I want to stick these texture on the sculpture after the sculpture finished.

Title

‘Perfect Lover’—To focus on the dark side of love

Content & Intro

I broke up with my ex-boyfriend before going to university. He believed lovers should be similar, so that they can share their mind and emotion to each other immediately, while I disagree. Then I realized that we do love each other, but we had nothing in common. The gap between us made me started to think about the falsity of love. Does perfect lover exist? 

I doubted that maybe lover is just a beautiful lie from our ancestor to avoid loneliness, to cover the truth that everyone is an independent individual on this big blue earth, to entice their children and grandchildren to procreate. No one has everything in common, people are always looking forward to find a perfect one to love while maybe the so-called perfect lover does not exist at all.

So I decided to pay more attention on the negative part of love in this project, making a sculpture in a gothic but romantic style.

Context

#1 ‘Les Amants (The Lovers)’ from Rene Magritte

#2 ‘Works with Ulay’ from Marina Abramović

#3 Qin Feng’s paint

#4 Miss Havisham (a character) from movie ‘Great Expectation’

Media & Process

I pick up some shapes from Marina Abramović’s performance and Rene Magritte’s painting, because they have something in common, and use tracing paper and pen to draw the outline of the shape then put them together. I want to make a sculpture that could be worn on two people’s head by gypsum. Actors are going to wear this sculpture and stand back to back, walk to the opposite side, try to get free from the sculpture, while they can not. The communication and control by each other could be present throughout this way. When you only focus on the head part, it seems like they are kissing, they still love each other. In fact, they really want to escape. This is tangle condition and an abnormal emotion. 

I have been inspired by human organs, such as muscle and heart. I want to combine Qin Feng’s work and the texture of organs to make some textiles, then I want to stick them on the outside of sculpture. People can only see that the whole sculpture is red, then they could find there are lots of details when they get close.

Final Outcomes

A wearable sculpture as it was showed in the following picture.

Reportedly magritte’s mother jumped into water to suicide, he saw his mother’s body up from the water when he was 13. The image that the face was covered by cloth left a deep impression in his mind, he was inspired by this in his works ‘lovers (Les Amants)’ . The cloth is covering lovers’ face as the main elements of the men and women kissing, yarn might be able to cover the facial features, but it can not covered the emotion. Because of the deliberate veil covering, the abstract love was highlighted instead.

I really interested in the shapes in Magritte’s paint, the outfit and the main shape of the cloth which were covered on lovers. It seems like they fell in love, they kissed, but actually they do not mind who is at the opposite side. I decided to use fabric to cover on people’s head that symbolized the blind love. Then I made some textile which inspired from the heart and organs to covered on the people’s head, in order to paraphrase the outlook from mageritte’s paint in my way, means the hurt of love. 

I made some textile yesterday, but it did finish yet. The inspiration was from an artist called Qin Feng. His works are always with strong passion and emotions. There are some of his work made me feel really depressive, so I tried to use some elements from his work to create new textiles. Some Qin Feng’s works are presented below.

I made some examples, you can find some of them below. I want to stitch them together to combine them in a heart shape, also I hope these textures could be similar as that of heart.

I broke up with my ex-boyfriend before going to university. He believed lovers should be similar, so that they can share their mind and emotion to each other immediately, while I disagree. Then I realized that we do love each other, but we had nothing in common. The gap between us made me started to think about the falsity of love. Does soul mate exist? Does perfect lover exist? Is love a natural of artificial thing? I doubted that maybe lover is just a beautiful lie from our ancestor to avoid loneliness, to cover the truth that everyone is an independent individual on this big blue earth, to entice their children and grandchildren to procreate.

It trouble me for a long time. 

When we fell in love, we seems like does not have any requirements to our lover, in fact, we still hope them could be better whereas we will never tell them. No one have everything in common, people are always looking forward to find a perfect one to love while the so-called perfect lover does not exist at all.

I want to show the despair of love throughout this project, using metaphor from paintings and traditional story to make a costume for Miss Havisham from Great Expectation. She is a tragic figure who was marginalized and alienated. Her spirit was shattered because she was abandoned on the wedding day. Then she wore her wedding dress to the end of her life, refusing to leave home and lived like a ghost without any sunshine. Her gothic lifestyle and tortuous love life make her became a classic eccentric character. In the book, the description of this woman is desperate and gloomy. She looks so beautiful in her wedding dress, sitting among dusty dried flower, jewels and the wedding cake that covered with cobwebs and insects. She still looks forward to her lover even she is so hysterical and resentful.

For the pattern, I want to use red spider lily which symbolized despairing love in some Asian area as an element to make a print or painting on the fabric, then stitch some metal piece and these fabric on clothes to make the costume seems like a bloody dress with red spider lily. But I hope the main body of the wedding dress could be white to show the pure love, so that only the heart part would be covered by red decoration, which means the heart break.

In the ancient story, the person who was shot by Cupid’s arrow would fall in love with others. I think the bloody heart part on the costume should be impaled by a Cupid’s arrow, which represents a negative meaning —love become despairing when we fall in love.

I went to V&A to visit the exhibition of Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams. His using of delicate textile, unique silhouette and special cutting impressed me a lot, thus I might reference some silhouette from him to create a new thing.

To be continue…

Speaking of the strange development of my work, I want to introduce the project first. 

The project is about “Here”. In my opinion, “Here” could be an abstract space, sometimes I realized it as an atmosphere around us. We stay in “Here”, we could feel it from the surrounding things like voice and visible stuffs. So I collected varies leaflet and newspaper which could be a carrier of the issues from our everyday environment and was inspired by the color and pattern from them, then I tried to combine the color and pattern together by ranking and drawing lots.

I found it might be too simple,because our environment could be recognized by various ways such as vision and hearing.  I’m trying to make an experiental music in order to show the voice of “Here I am”, all the original sound was from my daily life. I’ll mix them together then develop something new. It is not the first time that I tried to make a sound but still a little bit tricky for me. It will be present tomorrow as soon as it becomes successful. I’m trying my best, wish me luck.