POPPED

Editorial

Who are you? How do you exist? Is your social milieu you? Is it your place within society? Or is it a sum of your experiences?

Elodie Carrel, MC Llamas, Ching-Yu Wang and Yan Wang constitute an interdisciplinary group of artists exploring Self-Existence.

In POPPED, you will find a pink jumpsuit, wide eye, a mirror, pPolaroids activated through abstracted painting and weaving. The repetition of photographic self-portraits questions the value of self-existence. A frame, neon lights, a hanger, paper and white cloth realize the attempts from abstraction to concretion in another series of photographs or performances.

Carrel’s subconscious reflection through name repetition, inner and outer conflicts and drawing without meaning are used to explore the Absurd. The use of weaving and colorful paints on the polaroids of close-up portraits is MC’s way of representing the self through abstract figuration. The blurry uncertainty in Ching-Yu Wang’s photos questions viewers’ thoughts about the meaning of existence. Finally, the attempts of filling up a frame and objectifying the body in Yan Wang’s photography work and performances explore the futility of trying to evidence her existence.

POPPED takes you on a cyclical journey of searching and trying to identify self-existence with the four artists. You may feel absurd, hurt, uncertain or futile through reading. Or it can just be an experience of chewing bubble gum. It pops. It is chewy. It gets sticky. And it pops over and over again. Only you have the answer of what you will get.

Critical Reflection

Graduate Diploma in Fine Art has pushed my limit of the understanding and practice of photography as well as other fine art media. It has been a transformative journey to me in terms of my thinking and working process.

For the first three projects, I was more certain about my relationship to photography because I had not start to understand other ways of making art. My work was very directed with certain meanings projected on each element and it was always close ended. I used blur to show unsettled conscious in moving images, colors to relate observers’ view of the city in an installation, iris shape as desire and light as attraction in photographs. I was very clear about my intentions and believed it was the way of creating art. Not until I talked with a classmate and thought further about others’ artwork that I did not understand, I started to see the different approaches to art. I always extracted elements and put them back together to convey a meaning in a specific way while some others’ work was more open and sometimes the artists did not have an answer for its development.

By the time I got to the fourth project, although I still used a similar way of selecting props and setting up scenes for photography work, I started to think about how light affected the atmosphere, how body could create certain feelings, and how viewers would feel or understand the meanings of those props and actions. However, at the critique, I again came across the discussion about openness and closeness, and potential possibilities of an artwork. I thought it had much to do with motivations. Some artists made art for others. They explored themes and raised questions while they did not necessarily have answers or certain attitudes themselves, leading to the openness and more possibilities of their work while my motivation was simply self-expression of certain situations, which led to closeness of the work. My work was questioned about the thread between the subjects photographed and the feature of photography itself, and the balance between my intentions on props and viewers’ interpretations. Compared with others’ work that were recognized, I got completely trapped in self-doubt.

By the time I got to the fifth project, my project became very different, although it explored the same idea as the fourth project. The work spoke more through action, its relations to the environment and duration as performances, instead of specific projected meanings. However, the emphasis of viewers’ reading was actually different from my intention although they were related. Therefore, I cannot confirm it was a positive development but I am sure that my way of thinking and working has been enriched.This program has pushed my exploration and identified my shortcomings and uncertainty in photography and other media. I hope to get further development to become a professional art photographer in the future, which is why I am apply for master’s photography program. I think Graduate Diploma works very well as a pre-master’s course especially for someone like me who has never studied art before. The guidance through tutorials and critiques, support in techniques and facilities as well as enough room for my independent research, thinking and practice have supported me to get prepared for master’s course.