MOTHER IN BRAILLE.
My Honours project explores how sculpture, installation and personal symbolism can address intimate family bonds, strong feelings and things that are difficult to say with language alone. My project seeks to pay homage to my mother, and to manifest highly decorative pieces of furniture and messages that she could fit into her life and think fondly about. Mother in Braille is the second artwork I’ve made for her since my childhood. By using beads and braille to communicate acknowledgement and reciprocation for my mother, I found a medium and a place that transcends a long period of silence, pride, and guilt to be vulnerable and feel longing for my mother’s happiness.
In my Honours studies, I developed an awareness and understanding of the beauty of labour, my cultural influences, and the politics of gift-giving. The installation work is personal and is replete with allusions to my happy and secure childhood, which contributed to my aesthetic language that I describe as luxurious and elaborate. These aesthetic features characterise the presence of trust within the work that I have for my mother in delivering this gift for her. My project Mother in Braille is an example of an artwork that is as beautiful, optimistic, and confident; as it is of the life that my mother has built for me.
As an artist, an Australian immigrant with a Malaysian-Chinese background in a middle-class family, I reflected on the motifs and aesthetic language that I use and prefer, such as the presence of joy and how my artworks focus on giving back to my family are influenced by the advantages that come with the wealth of my parents and the positive experiences they impart on me to pursue a career path that I enjoy. As an artist with a design background, I am interested in merging familiar domestic items with an artistic expression. An example would be sugar. I am fond of sugar; in my pastime as a child in Malaysia, they were my siblings and my favourite consumables that were one of a few things that are restricted and given small amounts of. Extending the life span of sugar by turning them into reflective panels in my project, Snow Chrysanthemums, allowed me to express my fondness for them beyond taste, to a familiar visual and tactile experience that is reminiscent of one of a few luxuries that I had as a child in Malaysia.
You can access my CV here.
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