Drawn From the City (Master post)

Working with Found Objects

In working with found objects, I worked with the spiderwebs in my room when I moved into my accommodation in Edinburgh. It interested me how although I was moving into an unlived space there was already a resident in it. I started associating my initial doubts regarding university with the growing spiderweb. An invasive presence in my room, a piece of decoration that wasn’t mine, infesting my space. It was too good of a metaphor for my increasing doubt and anxiety to not utilise for this project.

A photo of the spiderweb in my room when I first moved in

First visual response – I started experimenting with how I would approach building this installation by cutting up pieces of tights and building a small structure by my window underneath the actual spider web.

I tracked my anxious thoughts throughout the week in a tally system in my notebook that I carry with me around Edinburgh. If they occurred in my room, I would immediately add a strand to the growing structure in my room. If they occurred whilst I was out, I used the tally system to keep track of how many I’ve had.

A page from my notebook showing the tally system I used to track my anxious thoughts

The starting point of the installation

Artist inspirations –

Karla Black –

Karla Black’s exhibit at the Fruitmarket. Source – https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/karla-black/

Karla Black’s tight piece at the exhibit that inspired the way I construct this structure

Tracy Emin –

Tracy Emin’s “My Bed” , 1998

Final Outcome, “Neurosis” –

In the final stages of this piece, I let light play a part in how I would display this piece. How light is casted manipulated the size of the web. This added to the narrative because how much certain thoughts affect us is dependent on purely how much important we give to them.

Main view with new lighting

How I would display this piece would be as an installation with the pages from my notebook. Invoking both the performance, as well as the installation aspect.

Making and Breaking Narrative –

For Making and Breaking Narratives, I focused on the fetishization of Asian women. As a girl from a Chinese family, born and raised in Beijing but was exposed to the western society from the age of 8 to now. I am perhaps one of the people most equipped with the right and wrong experiences to explore this topic.

My mother was the research part of this project as she moved from China to England briefly in 2001 as a woman in her mid-20s. I interviewed her about her experiences during that period of her life –

https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/s2204816_drawn-from-the-city-2021-2022sem1/2021/12/03/making-and-break…herproject-2-pt1/

I also read upon the history of Asian fetishization and the fact that the preference for Asian women was deemed Yellow Fever, is already disgusting, as to like an Asian women to a white men, is like having an illness.

Artist Inspiration –

Comfort Girls by Eugene Lee Yang, 2015. In this short film Asian women are portrayed as commodity to be consumed by white men, literally.

Into The Fray by Andres Barrioquinto, an artist that inspired me visually, source – https://theartling.com/en/artzine/famous-surrealist-artists-asia/

Articles used –

https://www.vox.com/22338807/asian-fetish-racism-atlanta-shooting

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-madame-butterfly-effect-asian-fetish-history-pop-culture

Books –

I used this book as a part of my research in this project because of it’s inaccuracies and fetishization and fabrication of the interviewed Geisha’s life story

Inaccuracies in the books can be seen in the link here

Final Outcome – “I am not a piece of meat”

In my visual responses I looked at the Geisha Mineko Iwasaki.

I chose to replace certain parts of the her with salmon when the chopsticks are picking her apart, showing that to the “consumers”, she is literally a piece of meat to be consumed.

initial sketch to give direction for the collage

The final collage was originally just going to be this, however I decided to add more decorative elements in the form of origami flowers but in the same way a chief would add flowers to a dish

I would display this outcome as just an A3 canvas by itself.

Mapping a soundscape –

To start this project, I attended a sound walk along with my peers around the meadow in Edinburgh where we send sound recording of peculiar noises to inspire us along this project. However, my attention quickly moved away from nature sounds, but instead in the more intimate moments happening around the city.

Whatsapp groupchat for the sound walk

That was the soundscape I wanted to focus on. I went to cafes where each table of people had their own little sound bubble and just listened. I wanted to transfer that feeling of that intimate moment visually.

Artist inspiration –

Agnes Martin –

Agnes Martin came to mind for this particular project as work captures micro-expressions and the subtlety of our emotions, Martin believed that “Art is the most concrete representation of our most subtle feelings”