Drawings, animations and collected objects Drawings

Inspired by this self-narrative, I made two long-format drawings. In the first Navigation (18 × 80 cm, colour liner on paper, figure 2.100-3), 2015, I drew an imagined troop of girls marching into an unexpected and dangerous swamp. The characters were drawn with colourful lines and were simplified providing few details. Each has a similar face and body. One by one they hold hands like grasshoppers tied to a straw. They are empty inside and therefore transparent.

Figure 2. 99 Military Garden, 2015

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Figure 2. 100-2 Navigation and details, colour pen on paper, 2016

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Figure 2. 103-5 1000 Miles and details, colour pen on paper, 2016

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The figures were marching away from the beautiful garden, not even looking at it.

They have optimistic faces and quick light steps even when walking on narrow rails. They keep on marching, even though there is no road under their feet and a swamp filled with purple dots waits for them to fall in. Using straight lines, I built geometrical structures that contrast with the organic shapes of the ‘garden’. The plants tangle with each other, they are unorganised, untidy and reject any

attempts to be unified into a single form.

A second long-format drawing 1000 Miles (21 × 90 cm, colour pen and watercolour on paper, figure 2.103-5), 2016, is a poly-scenic illustration

representing several events happening simultaneously. It begins at the right-hand side where there are two figures swimming in a pool. A giant man rests his arms on the edge of the pool while talking to a tiny boy below. On the left-hand side of the work, a group of identical girls are sitting, chained to boxes. They hide their faces in their arms and remain forever asleep. The chains are joined to the drawing of a house on their right. The sleeping girls are unattended and isolated, a brick wall separates them from a nice, cosy interior space depicted in the centre of the drawing. Mushrooms in pots, the green leaves of plants and an armchair provide an empty utopia that nobody wants to visit. It is forgotten or unknown.

The work metaphorically implies closed minds that have lost their independence in a closed society. The featureless identical figures show little interest in

breaking the chains that hold them, preferring to follow and sleep forever in darkness.

The animation of the black-and-white abstract shapes (for projection) The marching teenagers in the garden looked like groups of moving boxes filling up the narrow paths of the garden. This inspired me to make a colourless

animation of falling ice cubes for the projection (figure 2.106). Using the Motion tool in Adobe After Effects, once again, I made the animation from inverted photographs of ice cubes. At the end of the animation, using the special effect filter ‘Hair’ I transformed the cubes into pieces of ‘plankton’ swimming in dark water (figure 2.107). The animation was quite abstract as most of the forms were not identifiable, but they enhanced the suppressing atmosphere.

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Figure 2. 106-7 Still frames of Plankton animation, 2016

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The animation of the transforming colourful shapes (for TV 1)

I made another animation for display on a T.V. monitor by using the Blur tool to blend a drawing of colourful abstract shapes (figure 2.108), forming a background for a semi-transparent video of a flower (in the negative) trapped in a spider’s web. The video implied a promising future, a dream imposed on the trainees.

Although they were young and beautiful, it was hard to tell exactly what they were.

They were nothing but an illusion, misleading the eye.

Figure 2. 108 A still frame animation for TV 1 (the transforming colourful shapes), 2016

Figure 2. 109 A still frame of the video for TV 2 (a military training), 2016

134 The video of military training (for TV 2)

Observing the military training through a dirty, old and broken glass window in 2015, I made a surreptitious film of a group of trainees resting. It shows the featureless girls dressed in identical red clothes that makes it hard to tell their individual identity. Using the Beam tool in Adobe After Effects I added a beam of light behind the girls, echoing their dream of a good future (figure 2.109).

Photographs

My position enabled me to observe this training at close quarters, enabling me to get first-hand materials for documenting this event. Several photographs were chosen and printed on acetate sheets. For example, a group of trainees marching across the wide yard behind the garden (printed on A4 acetate in the pink-blue

Figure 2. 120-1 Photographs in The Reversible Future, printed on acetates, cast by blue LED lights, 2016

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and orange, figure 2.104), a girl playing the piano in an old classroom (repeated six times and printed on A4 acetate in tonally, figure 2.103), as well as the

construction site of a skyscraper in Taiyuan city (printed on a long strip of acetate 594×28 cm in purple and blue, figure 2.105). These elements were used as visual references linking my work to the veracity of what I saw and as a complementary element to the drawings. Pinned at a little distance from the white wall of the gallery (approximately 1-2 cm) they cast psychedelic colours when lit by the LED bulbs on the ceiling, emphasising the constrained atmosphere and the fragile

‘bubble’ of the dream of a prosperous future.

Assemblages of the collected objects

Figure 2. 122 A photograph in The Reversible Future, printed on acetates, cast by blue LED lights, 2016

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Using collected (found) objects to tell stories is not common for me. I had experimented with them in the previous project Northern Landscapes: Picture Poems but I wanted to be bolder and have a stronger emphasis on the

Figure 2.123-4 Assemblages of collected objects, The Reversible Future, 2016

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objects/sculptures to see whether this method suited my work. I wanted to test whether the projecting animations based on my drawing/illustrations were the best way of presenting my self-narratives. Could the animations or even the live events being filmed work just as well on TV monitors? Would photographs of real events or assemblage’s using found object work equally well? I was mostly convinced that I did not want to lose the direct connection between the

installation work and the drawing/illustration but felt I should thoroughly test this before continuing.

So, I collected several objects including a baby doll, a pair of toy glasses, a painted plastic sheet, several plastic soldiers and white round wooden plates.

Assembling these objects, I attempted to suggest some of the narrative events.

For example, one assemblage consisted of two mirrors and a baby doll fixed upside down (about 40cm wide and 22cm tall, figure 2.123) to represent the character of the marching girls. I arranged the doll upside down on a round platform with two circular mirrors in front of it that reflected two more doll figures.

They shared similar traits to the girls in the drawings; they were hairless and featureless; their individualities lost. They waited for an exterior power to define them, so they would know what to do.

Another assemblage contained an A2 acetate sheet, rolled up and brightly coloured with paint surrounded by a group of toy soldiers (figure 2.124). It also attempted to impart the idea of the constraint of the ‘promising future’ in the dreams of the girls being trained.

By using this variety of elements, I attempted to enrich the narrative effect of the installation by asking the audience to freely associate with them. However, this did not work as there were too many disparate elements and they did not come together to make, the work a wholly immersive experience. This problem is reflected upon critically in Chapters 3 and 4.