Open Studio at AADK Spain, Centro Negra
At the end of my residency at Centro Negra, in Blanca, Spain, supported by the AADK Spain team, I presented an open-studio-type exhibition which featured two major installations.
During the entire month of July, I have been able to know a different way of living and constructing, an unfamiliar rhythm of thinking and researching. I am especially inspired by the current and past interaction of the local habitants of the beautiful landscape in the Valley of Segura, in the Murcia region.
Their precarious way of constructing both the material and spiritual community, due to the mountainous, dry environment, has been the main source of my creation during this residency.
The complete press release of this exhibition can be viewed on issuu, in its English version, or Spanish version.
In installation work "Negra_Rebuilt", I investigated women’s expressions through materials found or used in local crafts, notably grass, textile, and clay. I wish to establish a relationship between the social landscape in Blanca and women’s shared life experiences, such as pregnancy, manual labor, confined space, and death. My project is an ongoing collection and fabrication of elements that bounce between creation and repetition, between nature and architecture, between privacy and publicity. Altogether, I aim to assemble a “library” of arranged objects and symbols which can converse and argue with each other, though in a silent manner.
Negra_Built
Site-specific installation at Centro Negra,Blanca, Spain
baked dough
variable dimension
2017
The two mini-installations, the "ODE" series, explores the origin of human life and the transmission of human species on earth. However, such a glorious function of the womb has often been associated with adjectives such as "evil", "dirty", "unlucky", "bloody", "pervert"... To dissect the secret of birth, I used embroidery - a form of labor tightly knitted with female life throughout history - to depict each layer of this container of life. The new "containers" - elongated visual rectangles, are then installed in hidden yet inevitable places in the exhibition space: over the head and underneath the steps, respectively, when one descends the stairs.
ODE I
Embroidery on plastic,
installed underneath the staircase in Centro Negra, Blanca, Spain
ODE II
Embroidery on plastic,
installed above the staircase in Centro Negra, Blanca, Spain
