XINYU LONG
In this section, I will share three relevant contexts that have been significant to the development of my creative practice. including a memorable lecture, a trip to the archive, and interesting group crits.
London Metropolitan Archives
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is a public research centre which specialises in the history of London, caring for and providing access to the historical archives of businesses, schools, hospitals, charities, and all manner of other organizations from the London area. With over 100km of books, maps, photographs, films, and documents dating back to 1067 in our strong rooms, they're proud to provide access to one of the finest city archives in the world - you could call it the memory of London(The city of london, 2023）.
This was the first time I came to London to get a direct feel for the city's entire comprehensive history and culture from ancient historical sources, and the most impactful part of my time here was the exchange and sharing of some interesting documents in one of the rooms for the archive session. Each document was randomized, like opening a blind box, containing some memories and social concepts of the times. One of the sets I drew was a photo file about transgender people, featuring several beautiful women of different skin colors who were invited to be photographed, without hiding their beauty（you can see in the scrolling images that I have recorded their beauty in my own sketches）. The other is a document about the black lesbian community, and it is easy to see from the text that the black women's community of the time had a tough road to travel in their journey for social and personal independence. This reminds me of some of the themes in my work, such as gender perception. It made me believe more that the difference between male and female sexes is only a difference in their genitals, just as Beauvoir said that the definition of a woman's gender is actually given by society, and this is true for both genders. Therefore, there are usually such images or sex symbols in my paintings, and they are usually a breakthrough from the traditional image of the two sexes.
Raksha Patel's Talk
I attended this talk because I was intrigued by the work on this poster and learned from the talk that Raksha Patel's paintings focus on the lived experience, migration and identity of the South Asian diaspora in the UK. She showed current and previous work from her archive. These works are imbued with a strong sense of narrative and each has been privately constructed, with a post-colonial atmosphere emanating from both the ever-changing landscapes and architecture, and the natural spaces.In addition to her latest work 'landowner', I found two more black and white drawings that I really liked in the personal website she provided, including the titles of their works. Also as a female artist, the women in her images always evoke and resonate with my own memories of my mother.
Besides her work, her research approach also got me thinking. In her creative practice she has photographed and recorded conversations with British South Asian diaspora from different regions and questioned what it means to come from a community that is rooted in another place but is still British. This in turn challenged stereotypes of the region by those living outside of the community and region. In addition to this, she learns how visitors to each area will interact with it through their own positioning, and how artists who have grown up in the area and have a deeper sense of familiarity and nostalgia see the space. Perhaps I could take the same approach to obtaining first-hand information in my artistic research process, which I believe is more direct and interactive when done in a real space.
Landowner, 2023
Safe-House-Final-small-scaled , 2016
Motherelands , 2016
An opulent veneer , 2016
Group crits 10 Dec
This was our first group activity, and I don't know if it's a coincidence that all the members of our group were more or less intrinsically connected to the theme at that stage, but most of our works were related to the exploration of self-identity as well as the exploration of "nature", "body", "family" and so on. Through the sharing of works and discussions, Alicia gave me many artists and writers that is very suitable for my research, and I also got new ideas from some of my classmates.
There are a few perspectives from this process that I think have led me well in my later art practice. For example, Alicia made us think about the importance of cross-cultural dialogues and our ownership of voicing things, which is about how we are perceived and how we position ourselves as Chinese artists. It's true, I think we are coming to a multicultural region where the conversation is broader, and if we don't establish a field about ourselves, we won't have the space to communicate with a wider audience and other artists. Like the very personal and irreversible issue of existentialism, if I want to go into making work about feminism, first I should think about how it feels to live in the world as a woman. Besides, I've gotten some positive feedback on my small drafts, both in terms of the visual effect and the thinking that surrounds it, which gives me an indication of what my work means from the viewer's point of view, which allows me to continue with this kind of work and to pick and choose a few to expand on and explore. Finally, after this conversation, I also found classmates who were exploring similar themes to me, which means we can exchange experiences and share ideas on a regular basis in the future.
Additional context
Women In Revolt
This exhibition showed Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 presents two decades of art as provocation, protest, and progress. Taking the 1970 National Women's Liberation Conference as its starting point, the exhibition explores the relationship between art and the women's movement in the UK. It brings together women who made art about their lives and the inequalities that informed them, acknowledging that the personal is political.
The exhibition was recommended to me by Anna at Peka-Kuka presentation, so I went to Tate Britain that same weekend and entered the exhibition area to hear the sound of a woman's voice hissing, like a primal, feral roar，and I watched an experimental video (screenshots in the previous pictures) with this soundtrack. It was about the whole process of a mother giving birth to a child, including the pre-labor preparation, prenatal pains, underwater birth, etc. The impact of the images was also very strong, when I saw the mother's swollen and blackened nipples and the tired but determined eyes, I was reminded of the sculpture "she-wolf". I felt that she did not look like a human being at the moment, but a beast that was going to become a mother. This work gave me some significant creative ideas and reminded me of some of the beasts and orcs with female characteristics that appear in my images. In my perception, beasts are not associated with violence, brutality, and masculinity, but rather with the power of life, motherhood, and mystical beings. It's an important factor in the atmosphere of my images. In addition to discussions such as these on the topic of reproduction, this exhibition also deals with women's employment rights, social status, and gender and bodily identity, as well as presenting millions of women's thoughts on changing times that are very relevant to me.
Reference
The city of london, 2023(Date updated). London Metropolitan Archives. Available at: <https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/history-and-heritage/london-metropolitan-archives> [Accessed 5 January 2024].