Urban Warriors
The Urban Warriors series focuses on the uncertainty of China’s future, addresses China’s new attitude towards internationalism, and offers an awareness of the challenges and inequalities of China’s factory workers that are facing today, most importantly their sense of lost identity. I utilized the printmaking process to serve as a metaphor to question the nature of China’s massive labour force.
This is an ongoing series of mixed media wood panels assembled with 282 original collagraph plates; each individually made by hand with the use of everyday found and recycled materials, inked, and pulled through the press. The printed images of the warriors resonate with China’s historical Terracotta Warriors. As a result, this continuous creative process demonstrates my embedded vision of the cyclical nature of China’s cultural history and displays my depiction of the massive labour force that is currently the backbone off the country’s flourishing economy. They are indeed the “soldiers” of contemporary China. Through the opening and industrialization of the 1980s and 90s China became the “assembly line of the world”, is part of a global chains of the production and circulation, and act as a global player investment and credit.
Behind this rosy picture of growth and success lays class conflict and corruption on a huge scale. The country has only begun to tackle complex labour and environmental issues as its economy develops, and it is unclear what impact those factors might have on it's explosive growth. For example, a large collaged rice paper scroll serves as a vehicle for myself to invite and provide insightful commentary regarding the tens of millions of migrant workers who obliged to work extraordinary long hours in atrocious conditions. How much longer can China provide social peace and continue to provide capital with cheap and compliant supply of labour-power? At some point perhaps, the complementary dynamic of accumulation between the US and China will become a competitive one.
Urban Ch'i
Just as the practice of acupuncture is aimed at relieving stagnation caused by the stress in the human body. Urban Ch’i is a series of work that brings focus to the intense sentiments of Vancouverites’ toward their city’s intricate cultural fabric. My intention was to not only feel the skin of the city, but also to penetrate the hard surfaces, the inner layers of its intestines and veins.
Most importantly, to release Vancouver’s urban toxicity in order to reach the original ground and get in touch with the collective Ch’i the binds people of Vancouver with nature, and, to relieve the current tensions in the built environments. Urban Ch’i is an artistic way to inject a healthy dose of natural elements into Vancouver’s mechanized urban grid.
Heart Stains
Our hearts are amazingly strong yet fragile. They can face trying circumstances and convoluted events and continue to beat, flutter, feel, and navigate with dignity. They can flourish and thrive through love or can shrivel up with pain, loneliness, despair, and grief. My subconscious mind allows me finding heartstains within others. When I am willing to quiet down…I can feel the heartstains thumping within my own heart. Stains from wounds…branded right through my heart.
Those unforgettable and beautiful life moments that miraculously seeped through me and heavily stained my existence forever with a warm and fuzzy kind of love. There are heartstains that I wish I can easily delete with a touch of a button…but there are also precious heartstains that I wish to multiply through the press in order to leave on paper for those I love…nevertheless, I keep listening to the sweet beat of my heart, beating in synchronicity with those I cherish, focusing on those heartstains that keep this fragile organ renewed and tough. Love is multifaceted indeed…
Exhibitions
