Entangled Restraint

Abstract

As Simone de Beauvoir has written, women face their day-to-day lives as “the other” gender. In my work, I aim to create a lens to view the lives of “the other” social roles into which I have been placed. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” according to Beauvoir. Her observations and conclusions ring true today, and based on my experience as a minority culturally, racially, and sexually, I have been deeply wounded in my experience of becoming a woman. My current work is documentary in nature, re-presenting the stages of my coping process. Through this work, I aim to transform negativity into self-identification of my diversity. The content of my work is based on the cultural and racial comments, and sexual and gender expectations I have received from the people around me. The process of art-making mirrors a surgical process of cutting open the wound, getting to the roots, extracting the messiness, and finally, a settling with myself, others, and the experience. It is a process of self-healing. Though the process of making is raw, and at times, distasteful, it is an empowering process and a way of healing myself and forgiving others. After seeing and experiencing much unpleasantness in humanity, translating the experience into paintings fosters growth, confidence, and hope that I hold for this society. Semiotics is continually explored in my paintings through characters, motifs, and mark-making in my paintings. In the works, They Said and Submerging Thoughts, there is repetition in the Mandarin character, which means the female form of “you.” To me, the character, , holds a lot of weight because I mainly receive it in sentences that are filled with the social constructs of how others expect me to be. Through the shifting of temperature and value in colors, the texts appear subtle in the paintings. Such visual language reflects how verbal abuse can be just as subtle and invisible but brutal at the same time. The repetition of the text on a different scale is a reflection of my mental state after the experience. In Still Me or You?, the motif of my feelings of containment from others’ comments and the established social construct is expressed through composition, mark making and color choices. Though I view myself as having a variety of potentials, the feeling of being contained and spied on resonates true as a member of society. The composition of the three heads signals the Trinity, which also represents the everchanging qualities of the humanity. Through the expressive and destructive mark making covering parts of the head, the figures are contained within the composition. The saturation of color covered by the tinted neutrals represents my act of trying to fit and adjust to fit into the norms. “Feminist artists blur the distinctions between art and criticism, between art and politics, and between theory and practice,” according to Hilde Hein. Though my works are associated with social inequalities and discriminations, I am not interested in presenting them as criticism or political statements; for me, they are aftereffects of how certain actions and words can lead to mental struggle and self-disapproval. The messiness needs to be put on a pedestal through my art. By sharing these experiences that do not get talked about enough, people can be made aware of the harm of an unintentional action or comment. By refusing to distinguish my standpoint and simply show vulnerability, I hope to invite everyone of different races, gender, sexuality, religion, and political beliefs into my wounded world.