CHENGCHUAN HU
CITY
In bustling cities in modern times, it seems that every person takes an attitude of “peddling one’s papers”, but every one actually interacts and links with each other. The potential links and interactions connect the correlations together to sustain the society. This phenomenon is compared to operation of gears in this project. Every part is independent from each other, but none of them can be omitted. In this stereoscopic space, people from all walks of life play different roles, and hardly have bodily contact, but each of them performs its own functions in different organizations and has its own existence significance. It resembles gears in different sizes, each of which performs its own functions, and links each other.
DETERIORATION
Since its dawn, human have been constantly exploiting and utilizing resources on the earth for the development and construction of technology and urbanization. As resource consumption accelerates, the earthly environment becomes worse and worse, hence pollution and various human-made disasters attract my concern. Since I noticed the harm to nature by human beings (which, in a sense, is a “self-mutilation” behavior of human beings), I intended to show the theme via a cubic statue with visual impact. Harm to human beings, literally, refers to bodily harm.
This concept is expressed via parts of human body. Nail is an artificial product, also an element representing industrial development and social construction. Inserting such a hard element into eyeball or finger of human visually shows heavy pain and impact force. Besides, it also represents that human beings are harmed by objects created by themselves. Forcibly hammering human elements into soil block shows a feeling of violence. Nail-biting and helplessness of human beings are showed when the finger struggles.
CONSERVATION
As time lapses, all things also change. Food decays and goes mouldy, the earth’s surface weathers and erodes, and so on. There is nothing can stop these natural phenomena. I focused on preservation. Hence, the first idea coming to me when I made surveys is amber. Amber refers to hard crystal formed by resin completely wrapping an insect and curing. Ambers can be intact even after undergoing thousands of years of erosion. I also thought of dinosaur fossil. Many skeletons of died dinosaurs have been preserved even after several crustal movements. Besides, refrigerators, sealable pots, and such devices also have the function of preservation. As to those that are preserved, I believe they are beautiful and valuable, so they are preserved. Hence, I adopted crystal glue as a modern preserver. Furthermore, this kind of material is crystal clear, which, together with bubbles, distinguishes my theme better. The objects that I want to preserve are skeletons made from shaping clay. The skeletons were chopped, and soaked in crystal glue. Color concentrates were added into the crystal glue to form certain color flow, to show that a beautiful thing was preserved in the process of its elapsing.
DUMPLINGS
This project addresses my nostalgia for home: especially for the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year. In considering this, I manufactured hand-made dumplings out of air dry clay which symbol for Spring Festival. Originally, I produced the dumplings to contemplate an atmosphere of homesickness. Then with more dumplings were being made-and like Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds-I understood each of my dumplings as a unique individual and wanted to convey a sense of meaningfulness within each of them.
I made 108 dumplings in total which in Buddhism the number that represents transmigration and delivering all living creatures from torment. In an attempt to relate my own nostalgia with historical recounting, I recalled the Nanjing Massacre through the delicate construction of each dumpling. By downloading and printing images of the Massacre, and affixing them to each dumpling through various adhesives, I transfer these flat photos onto the surface of my dumplings. Gesso was applied to paint on the dumplings before transferring photos in order to produce a protective layer as well as creating adhesive surface. After the process of transferring, liquitex was then utilized due to its smooth and reflective visual texture after dried. After that, dumplings would have a visible visual impact and be more believable.
Moreover, I made a bowl covered by newspaper in Chinese characters which served as a container and functioned as a metaphor for social media, sharing the dumplings with historical truth. Some dumplings are affixed to the bowl with epoxy resin, while others are loosely spread, which viewers could touch and examine the texture as well as the photos. By constructing this sculpture, I want to create a visible contrast between the dumpling, its facsimile, and its hidden meaning.
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