Week 8 Synopsis+Curating Portfolio writing

Synopsis

First Love is an exhibition of emotional experiences where visitors can experience the various stages of first love through artworks.

Curating Portfolio writing

-the development of your curatorial rationale:

Through preliminary research, I found that most people’s first love ends in failure. However, in teenage love, young boys and girls always love someone with the most fearless courage and with the most sincere heart. At first, we all think that the perfect ending to our love is to enter into marriage with the person in our hearts and receive the blessing of our friends and family. However, young and naive first love can end in failure due to youthfulness, family disapproval, differences in life plans and so on. Through preliminary research, I found that the break-up of this relationship, which would affect us for the rest of our lives, was not at all formal or haphazard, with no ceremony like a wedding to commemorate it. If a wedding is the medium to a marriage, I hope my exhibition is the medium to say goodbye to the first love and to the next one.

-consideration of your chosen artist’s works and content:

At this stage I have collected the work of four artists and am in contact with one more.

1. ‘Love Letter’: installation artwork

Artist: YIXUAN BAI

This artwork is an old-fashioned radio that spews out ‘love letters’ in the form of receipts. I personally love this artwork, it represents the love that people feel for each other when they first fall in love, just like the effect of the artwork “gushing out”, it is unstoppable. Also, love letters are what most people use to express their love in the first place.

2. “Love you”: a work of photographic art

Artist: JIYAO YANG

This is a collection of photographic works in which the artist documents and captures the venue and scene of the first date in the first love stage, and the shyness of the first date.

3. “Embracing in the Snow”: illustration

Artist: koou_

This artwork was inspired by the Japanese drama “First Love”. The artist illustrates the scene where the female lead in love goes to the airport in Iceland to look for the male lead, and in the snow, they run to each other and hug each other tightly.

4. ‘I Love You’: printmaking – still in contact

Artist: XINKUN WU

This artwork expresses the idea that “the more I love you, the more I lose myself until I disappear”, expressing the idea that most couples become more and more lost in themselves over time.

5. Take My Tears

Artist: ZHIQIAN ZHANG

This project is about “empathy” in intimate relationships. The inspiration comes from my own experience. I find that the closer the relationship we are, the less we can understand each other.Especially sad emotions. In a relationship, most girls are used to crying to express their emotions and needs, and it is difficult for boys to understand why girls always cry. In fact, love is more complicated than other feelings.
Sometimes both parties cannot give in, so sademotions are more difficult to convey and resonate. So in this project, I tried to express my teelings in various ways, and finally I chose to express it in a form of performance. During the performance, I dropped my tears into my partner’s eyes, and finally the tears came from His eyes flowed out again. I want to give people a more intuitive experience in this way, and at the same time as a performer, I can convey my feelings better.

6.Let Me Go

Artist: BORUI ZHANG

This work focuses on the question of whether or not first love is regrettable, interviewing people of all ages about their first love, their memories and their feelings about it.

-your reflection on a range of curatorial and artistic projects that relate to your theme/concept, artists and approach:

I have thought about adding some interactive elements to my exhibition to engage the audience. I would like to add a collage session at the end of the exhibition, wanting each audience to not only appreciate and view the exhibition, but also have some sense of participation, and these collages can also be used as my material collection. Moreover, I also seared the same mint candies from the Japanese drama ‘First Love’ because I also wanted to add some multi-sensory engagement to my exhibition during my study of Beyond the Visual in Themes last term.

Kara Walker

The text briefly describes Kara Walker’s statement in the autumn 2017 exhibition and the background of the artist.
Kara Walker is under great pressure as a living African American female artist, that is, what is expected of her by others, regarding her race, colour, gender, etc. But, she is incredibly proud of both her race and her gender, and living in the United States has made her feel oppressed by white (male) people and constantly fight for it.
Kara Walker has presented her own attitudes through her work in numerous exhibitions around the world, showcasing works created with race, sexuality, gender and violence in mind.

Impact Arts

The text focuses on the VELCRO POETRY PROJECT, a creative arts project funded by Education Scotland and Education Scotland’s Creative Welfare Fund and delivered by North Ayrshire Literacy & English.
On the website, I could see that the pupils in the school were encouraged to create poetry and then take the inspiration from the poetry to create artwork, using a variety of techniques such as oil printing, collage, heat printing and clay modelling. At the same time, the pupils’ poems are performed and recorded. At the end, each participating student received a book containing their poetry and artwork poems.
This is a complete art project about creating art, from inspiration to the final product, each step of the process is interlinked and has a strong connection and integrity that I should learn from.