Tally Mark - Commission of Gatton College of Business and Economics
Tally Mark is inspired by an ancient quinary notation, which approximately invented during the Qing Dynasty of China. In this system, the character ‘正’ represent the number five, and the number one to four are illustrated by the combination of the character’s four strokes in a certain order . When use the different strokes’ combination along with the character ‘正’, Chinese as well as Eastern Asian can create all of the necessary numbers for calculation.
I enjoy the simpleness, effectiveness by using this tally system for accounting, but I also fascinated at the patterns generated by stokes’ combinations and character. At Gatton College of Business and Economics I designed the glass vinyl by applying these patterns in a variational order. I believe by grandly multiplying these tally patterns, an interesting visual experience will be established here.
Shadow writing is a miniature diorama combined with a video documenting the blurry transcription onto the sixty-four scrolls. I invert the black and white surfaces in order to make the text to look ghostly and the projection to appear like a classroom blackboard.
Fence is a site-specific installation I made for Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center. . This installation is made of glass-film. It consists of thousands online photos, which document recent Chinese student’s life. I group these images up into three categories---didactical practice, political brainwash and collectivism training. The design of the installation and its relationship to the natural light is meant to offer suggestive meanings and visualize the border of a cage.
These sixty-four poems and proses are also the subject of a maze that I created with sixty-four hanging scrolls. On each scroll, I rewrote one poem or prose fourteen times. By blurrily writing them with a brush, I again address my desire for a true connection to traditional Chinese poetry and the feeling of disengagement that result from such didactic techniques. Through a video that documents these blurry transcriptions onto the white sheets of hanging paper, I position the viewer on the other side of the paper and transpose the black and white surfaces in order to make the text to look ghostly and the video project to appear like a blackboard in the classroom.
Loop is inspired by Chinese scholastic morning exercise, which is a common symbol of China’s education system. Scholastic morning exercise is required daily, with every Chinese student doing synchronized physical training in groups. It is for the sake of student’s health and their behavioral uniformity. To create Loop, I took off both the minute and hour hand of each clock mechanism, and align these mechanisms into phalanxes. The groups of endless, synchronized movement hints at the character of Chinese school life.
Schoolroom references a common Chinese classroom, and developed out of my last show “Rote Shadows” at the Mill & Max Contemplative Arts Gallery. Schoolroom combines with two wooden constructions, hanging scrolls, Chinese school uniforms, surveillance and classroom elements. By applying and organizing these elements, I tend to create a center scenario of China’s school life.
The Shrine, which could be seen as a sign of ancestor worship, is built of a disassembled a Chinese school desk. I refashioned this piece of educational furniture into an empty shrine, which is a metaphoric depiction of how Chinese traditional culture in learned through rote memorization and exam cramming encouraged by the current educational system. The cut out patterns from the top of the shrine is the number sixty-four, written with digits of China’s age-old accounting practice. The sixty-four signifies the number of the classical poems and proses, which are the most popular works to appear in the dictation test of Chinese college entrance exam (“GaoKao”).
Loop is inspired by Chinese scholastic morning exercise, which is a common symbol of China’s education system. Scholastic morning exercise is required daily, with every Chinese student doing synchronized physical training in groups. It is for the sake of student’s health and their behavioral uniformity. To create Loop, I took off both the minute and hour hand of each clock mechanism, and align these mechanisms into phalanxes. The groups of endless, synchronized movement hints at the character of Chinese school life.
As a formally trained Chinese painter in gongbi style, I spent 60 days transforming information acquired from the Internet about the making of traditional Chinese painting into 14 gongbi paintings. These 14 paintings documented my “one week research” on websites.
The 2428 links transcribed by brush on treated rice papers address the essential definition, subject matters, symbolism, composition, material, making strategy of traditional Chinese painting, and seals.
The accompanying audio serves as a recording of the ambient sounds that created the special environment in which I worked.
