Emotion is the most substantial component of my work. Art helps me understand and reframe the raw emotions awakened by my life journey. I have filled different roles in various cultures as a woman. In Taiwan, my home country, I was part of the largest ethnical group, but I became a minority during my life in the United States and Europe. The complexity of one’s personna becomes determined by our interactions with our environment, through time.
Our lives are not always at ease. When inner conflicts emerge, they trigger complex emotions, whose layers only truly merge in time. Raw emotions are transformed into feelings through one’s lens of preconceived knowledge. Thus, we feel through a compound lens, the interpretation of feelings as ideas.
While most of us are equipped to experience raw emotions, we do not necessarily interpret things in the same way. I speak from my own experiences. When I make art, I search for insights using my body as an instrument. Through mindfulness investigations, I found the gap between my emotions and my feelings. And only by gazing into that gap with direct experiences, I found power over my life.
Drawing
Drawing is a very free form of exploration. In this practice, the lines came out of the tip of a pen or brush without planning. Start at one point and stop at one point. I find combinations of different materials and live forms, all constituted by simple lines.
Painting
Each picture attempts to capture an emotional snapshot, as felt through my body, although cognition itself is abstract and may not necessarily partake. The emotions themselves are abstract until they are recalled and represented, and can be constituted by several incidents at different times. It is a mindfulness investigation. The creation process requires reproducing past mental states and experiences.
Retaining and recalling emotions requires physical memory. Emotions build-up through my body, which as a physical host of my feelings allows me to investigate how and why it felt. Through this process, a visual form can be transmitted onto a painting. The condensation of emotion onto body and then onto a painting is a way to understand the outer world. It was the desire to understand what is out there that allows me to connect to people.
Sculpture
Sculpture is a form where I engage my sense of touch and explore different materials. Some materials allow me to achieve a drawing-like quality in sculpture, in particular the spontaneity in changing directions and shapes. In this practice, a study of forms and possibilities can be physically achieved through touch. With repeatedly crafting, a tactile sense of satisfaction lingers, and is then fed back into my other practices.
Installation
My installations are a very literal and direct way of expressing a state of being. From understanding the environment, and the decisions made to be in the space. The fabric leaves traces of my body and activities. Penetration of Flexibility gives a non-intrusive and respectful statement of taking part in city life as well as a walk in the woods.