Pulled Apart, 2017
Dried flower, fineliner, sewing thread, on paper.
For this IGCSE project, I focused on studying the motherboard, as the motherboard from above reminds me of a bird's-eye view of a city. The story behind the piece is based on an article I stumbled upon titled “Lost Rivers & Threads”. I read about what scientists and conservationists came up with that illustrates what we humans are doing to Earth. One metaphor informs the reader to imagine the biological world as a rich and diverse tapestry. In this work of art, every act of environmental destruction is like pulling a thread away from the tapestry. The changes are barely noticeable during the early stages, yet the beauty and functionality of the tapestry become slightly diminished with the removal of each thread. If too many threads are pulled away, the tapestry will wear out and, consequently, tear apart.
I began experimenting with the preservation of flowers once I thought there was not yet an element in this composition that could give the idea of nature. In a society where nature is at the forefront of discussion, I noticed that many new businesses reflect these thoughts in their aesthetics, and one way was using dried flowers as interior décor. I took the initiative to dry some flowers at home and tried to incorporate them into the continuous line. Through the simple yet complicated continuous line, a harmonised visual controversy for the viewer to decipher is created. One of the immediate challenges I have encountered was how I should attach the dried flowers to the paper, and this was how sewing was introduced to the project. I tried glueing and taping, but I felt it would damage the flowers (the dried flowers can last so much longer but are no less delicate than when in their normal forms).
The incorporation of sewing works to my advantage as it further supports the idea of the ‘tapestry’. The continuous line of the motherboard representing the city and its people ‘weaves’ together with the dried flowers by sewing to become the ‘tapestry’ portraying the close relationship between nature and us. All in all, the final outcome would hopefully invoke some corresponding thinking about our own actions. That is, what is urbanisation? Can we live in harmony with nature?
All the World's a Stage, 2018
Prismacolor, copic, fineliner, sewing thread, on paper.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven stages.
These lines from Shakespeare's Act 2, Scene 7 of "As You Like It" inspires my A-Level Coursework project with the given brief "The Picture as Stage".
We were prompted to build a box to create the space of a stage for our first-hand reference for the project. I took seven playing cards to represent the "seven stages" and linked them with a piece of red string, which symbolises the red string of fate. According to myth, the string is what the gods tie around the fifth fingers of touched destinies. Adding to what is being expressed in Shakespeare's words, I wanted to explore the theme of fate and destiny from the similar perspective Shakespeare has on the stages of life.
I came up with incorporating elements of puppetry as it reminds me of olden-day stage performances before we had television, making a simple control marionette, and taking pictures of my right hand controlling my left to express the "men and women merely players" being controlled by what we call life—everything was scripted from the start. My final composition of these different elements builds up my "stage". I studied artist Wan Jin Gim's works and was inspired by his depiction of the infinite colours of the human skin, and in my piece, these colours represent the many emotions and feelings involved in the span of one's life.
Places Without Faces, 2019
Prismacolor, fineliner, fishing line, on paper.
“Places Without Faces” portrays emotional exhaustion bred within urban stress, through the depiction of my concrete jungle hometown, Macau, as an unnatural and overwhelming place.
Artist Study: Guilherme Gafi
Prismacolor, oil pastel, on paper and sanded pastel paper.
Adopting the classical technique of watercolours and joining it with less majestic materials such as packaging tape and barricade tape, faceless workers without a present identity caught in the urban jungle are depicted. Artist Guilherme Augusto Gafi questions and observes the manufacturing of our own faceless acts as he portrays the anonymous participants of urbanisation in his collection “Agentes Concretos”.
