Words by the Artist: At a time when we are increasingly reluctant to trust information we receive via mass media, social media has emerged to offer us more than one means of knowing the outside world, particularly when news of more sensitive subjects are censored or transmission is blocked. We rely on such first-hand information, despite the fact that social media also transmits real news mixed with gossip and junk. Based on our orientation, we filter the information, we get what we need, and we try to understand information by referring to what we find around ourselves－this is how our view of the world is formed. The shock of news events is deeply absorbed in our mind and body, even before we can arrange this information based on rational analysis. Never before have events in faraway places been made so vivid to us, and we share their anger and despair.
“Ink Media” (2011-2012) is based on a collection of photographs I found online in recent years. I downloaded these political anti-war photographs in different places in the world to study their details in the quiet of my studio. Then, I opted to “revive” these scenes by means of ink painting, piecing these fragmented events together in installation and video form. What protesters fight against and what they ask for varies from place to place, but protest nevertheless is a shared means of individual as well as group political expression－it can be more effective with increased communication and participation. To retell these events by means of Ink painting can bring the audience closer to what people suffer for in faraway places, while my artistic participation takes place in my own peaceful and aesthetic way.
These ink paintings are also my preparations for a new animation video, which will not not arrange these events in terms of time and place, so that we can better appreciate the similarities: the human form is a medium for anti-war protest, a language for political expression, with all its strength and vulnerability.
Image: © Chen Shaoxiong, Pekin Fine Arts (Hong Kong)
