Female legs

The legs and feet are one of the last body parts that we consciously control, so they give us invaluable information about what someone is really thinking, their attitudes, and how they feel. The legs inspired by British stop-motion animated short film (1993) The Wrong Trousers and the stage of Ariana Grande's live.

I suppose that feminism has always been a completely Western concept. China has never had a spontaneous and feminist movement. This is one of the harvests when I went aboard to study. I don't want to talk about feminism in the field of feminist art, I prefer to analyse each artist's work which I am interested.

My work sometimes related to sexual. on this topic, in traditional way, men gain too many rights. Everyone got their own opinions on sex. For me, I don't want to by means of sex as an artistic expression. I used to reject this kind of art. The reason for it just because I can't accept the traditional view of sex. But now I find that if I want to transcend, only to face it and then surpass it. Like this artwork - female legs. I used newspaper, tissue paper, chicken wires to make a lower body of female's. Throughout the practice, I thought about: do I need to make a vagina for the body? Or do I have to put a pair of knickers on it? Finally I just leave it like nature. As the environment, I painted the wall all black to highlight the colourful legs, which I experienced from Crypt show last time. I am so satisfied that the dark space is strongly contrast to my work.

Ariana Grande's Live stage

Mummy

Mummy (Paper Mache) 31/10/2018

Mummy

Crypt church makes me feel wonder and mystery. When I went into the basement of the church, I felt chill and scared. It reminded me about corpse and zombie.

We have always known dread and panic, felt threatened by certain groups or situations, or by natural and human-made forces. And the spectres haunting our own era of 'late modernity' are many and varied. Albano,C (2012) states of fear from body terror and contagion to trauma and phobias, feelings of dislocation, displacement and alienation, narratives of guilt and shame, virtual fear and fear as entertainment are explored.

I think that fear is divided into two aspects: physical fear and psychological fear. When I walked into the Crypt church, the first feeling was gloomy. I saw small spaces in the church that made me feel depressed. I was thinking about what was most suitable for such a space and environment? The first thing in my mind were skulls, but I do not want to scare people, I want to install it like a friendly and warm way.

Face of Fear II, plaster, wood, 2018

Face of Fear series (I,II), 2017-2018 Face of Fear I, 2017, plaster, wire

Fear is kind of emotion, it represents a certain kind of inner state amounting to expectations&preparation for danger of some kind, even though the nature of emotion will be unknown.

In my opinion, fear cannot be escaped. It is a psychological and physiological phenomenon. It comes from internal, shows external. The French Artist Louis Bourgeois did the series sculpture about loneliness, jealousy, fear and anger. Albano, C (2012) claims: "Fear engulfs our most intimate inner world and the ways we shape it, calling upon both our inner and our outer defenses." In my work Women's Fear I, it shows deviant, they share one body screaming and looks terrified. The woman screaming for her sickness. The entangled wire represents inner world of the woman, but is not like that simple, she has other fears. What is not justified is her fear of people knowing about her sickness. As Albano,C (2012) demonstrates that: "Fear is felt within, through and across physical, mental and culture layers, implications the body both as the internal reservoir of anxieties and as the external referent of apprehension towards others."

When I was a kid living in my grandmother’s house alone in the evening, my warnings came in the form of stark fear. Fear is a psychological phenomenon, it from time to time appears in my life experience, such as in a closed darkness or unfamiliar surroundings, I would feel fear around me. In Women's Fear II, the scared faces made by plaster, I hope that these objects with strong colours contain a recognizable language which is easily understood appearing fear, scare, anxiety. the wood frame represents isolation. When you are sick, people don't like you; you are not desirable. Some disease are considered shameful because sinful. I created this work after I had Chicken Pox on Feb 2018, I isolated myself at home and didn't talk to anyone for 2 weeks. I fear people to know my sickness and I was isolated by my own fear.

Reference

Fear and Art in the Contemporary world - Caterina Albano

Untitled figure, 2017, plaster, wire

Untitled figure - pencil on paper, 2017

In the last decades, the visual art, for which the body has historically been a privileged subject, has delved into physicality with renewed emphasis across practices as diverse as performance, video art, installation and bio-art, as well as painting and sculpture.

With color suffusing the form of sculpted body, it let me focus on the sculpture itself, the human body. I introducing color into my work might attempt to realism. Frost, W(1996) argued that: "Outside the gallery, color was used in popular forms of sculpture to provide a heightened sense of realism." In my opinion, our body is being influenced by our life and experiences. In terms of body language, every part plays an important role. Actually, I am interested in life drawing, I observing the different model, different poses. I draw them, I sculpt them. I started to shift from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions.

Reference:

The Colour of Sculpture (1840-1910) - Van Gogh Museum, Henry Moore Institute

Series of Anxious, 2017

Anxious I, wood, paint, wire, 2017, 50x60cm

Anxious II, plaster, wire, 2017, 20x20cm

Through a variety of art practices using different forms, predominantly including drawing, painting, sculpture, comprehensive materials, I sculpt the emotion like fear, entanglement, anxiety.

In Albano, C (2012)'s opinion, "Anxiety - Fear that lacks a specific object, or 'the refusal to know what we are frightened of', is reframed within psychoanalytical theory in terms of repetition, which confers onto it an internal, psychic, repressed object." In my artwork Anxious I, the wrapped wire and dark spots represents anxiety and tangle.

Extended to Anxious II, I sculpted a flesh brain by plaster, then wrapped golden wire on it. I think at the core of modern neurosis, anxiety defines a disquiet that encompasses the excessive charge of modern urban living. Albano, C (2012) comments: If the concept of anxiety, as a form of fear whose object is undetermined and elusive, is intrinsically modern, fear, as we know it, is also a modern notion of the new sciences of physiology, evolution and psychology.

The inspiration (ideas and forms) of my artwork comes from those artists: Cecily Brown, Louis Bourgeois, Madonna, Frida Kahlo, Marina Abramovic.