Thoughts & Ideation/Brainstorming/Conceptualising
The art of materials. When initially presented with the task to incorporate found objects into my sculpture I thought about items that hold significant value in my life. My parents own a lot of things; it is the Asian immigrant mindset of resource hoarding.
When my parents were more new to the country we/they had very little to live off. So, we kept nearly everything as a 'just in case.'
At this inception, my thought process spiraled into the complexities of my familial bonds. What items could be used to represent the personalities of both my mother and father? How can I represent the nuances when it comes to the connections and my relationship with my family? I had all these thoughts that layered together literally and figuratively.
Marriage is still illegal in the Philippines. The country is very set in their ways and value tradition. The problem I have found with this is the fact my parents have had a degrading marriage since I could remember. Of course, this affected me in a way that it would affect any young child, but my parents would justify their poor behaviour of staying together for the "sake of the kids." Quite frankly, I have always found it immature. They follow the laws of a country they no longer live in and have made both my brother and I suffer the consequences of a failing marriage throughout our childhoods. I wanted to portray this "connected disconnect" in my sculpture.
Immigrant Parents - I struggle with guilt and pressure all the time. I had always felt the need to prove myself to my family because I am the supposed "black sheep." I come from engineers, nurses, dentists, accountants, etc... my parents came to Australia so I would be able to do "more" in life, according to their definition of more. I want to do art. Art and teaching. That is currently what I am pursuing because as an artist I do not dream of labour but instead reason. I often feel guilty for "wasting" my opportunity to be "more," considering I always got the grades to become their doctor or lawyer. I wanted to show this pull in different directions in my sculpture.
Asian Stereotypes - Asian parents often feel like strangers. I do not doubt my love for my parents or their undevoted love for me, but I cannot recall a time where they have truly known me. Whether it be as mundane as not remembering an interest I have or as severe as forgetting my birthday, there has always been an unreasonable space between us. There is a common joke between Asians that your parents will bring you random things as a sign of thanks instead of out right telling you they love you. I wanted to use a combination of my parents items along with items found at an op shop, symbolic of feeling like a stranger to my own family but still holding that connection of us together.
I wanted to portray that familial relationships are not just black and white. My relationship with my family is certainly rocky, but I love them nonetheless. It is an unconditional love for family. I wanted to portray this in its most innocent form in my sculpture, by creating a foetus connected by a gold chain to both figures of my parents. I wanted to make this figurative foetus of myself out of items my parents had thought I would like. Not to say I am ungrateful for them, but the thought behind them are only a guess. Untouched by the world, yet conceived from love (which my parents had at one point) a baby symbolises innocence.
Comparison - Generally speaking, from my parents' generation there is a fixed, traditional mindset. I have been subjected to internalised misogyny and sexism throughout my entire life. Constantly compared to my brother, I have had to take on the roles of a woman, which in turn means I had to shoulder all of my parents' burdens. My brother has always had the luxury of never hearing any of it. Therefore, he has grown up to lack empathy for others and does not understand why I do not ignore our parents' issues. I am stuck in the middle of two parents trying to turn me against the other - while we live in the same household - all while they remain married. I do not know if it was too literal in a sense, but I wanted the figures of my parents facing opposite directions from each other.
Starting the Process/Experimentation
I started experimenting with metal frameworks to support all the belongings I wanted to use to build up my sculpture. My Initial Idea was to use a technique similar to the sculpture I made during Week 6 of Studio Workshop.
I would use a repetitive process of:
Basic wire framework -> fill with rubbish (in this case, my collection of found objects) -> bind with twine -> keep layering items and binding with twine till I get the desire volume of the shape I desire.
I experimented with making a vague model of a female torso, mapping out how to create a 3D foundation from my initial sketch. I tried not to focus on symmetry of perfectionism, instead getting the rough shape as I would be filling in this framework with objects later on. Utilising the spot-welder for this experiment was definitely helpful in reducing the amount of sculpting wire necessary to create the base. It also helped in easier manipulation of the wire into desired shapes to form the overall figure of a woman's torso.
Ultimately, I scrapped this idea entirely considering the logistics of how my chosen items would bind by twine. I really had to think realistically for my chosen method in creating my sculpture, and thinking back to my Week 6 sculpture, I was disappointed with end result. This is due to the how much twine was needed to secure items. I found myself having to wrap it around itself multiple times just to keep the sculpture together, which starting hiding the items I wanted to be seen. Considering this factor, I scrapped the idea because I wanted the objects to be seen as they hold the most significance to the artwork.
I still continued using sculpting wire as a basic armature or support for my two figures as it is a solid base and easily malleable.
Materials: Combination of various articles of clothing (blouses & shirts) pre-owned from op shops and my mother, Sculpting Wire, Hot Glue
Above are two pictures of my work in progress, creating rough wire armature for structure. Using the gathered clothes as a representation of my mother, I cut the fabric into into various lengths to wrap around the wire armature - still similar to the previous technique I was planning to use. Originally, I was planning to use my original technique of twine binding to avoid using standard forms of fixing, but I did not find a reason to prohibit myself from glue that can be easily hidden within the sculpture.
The idea of tightly wrapped fabric almost equivalates to suffocation. In the most 'nutshell' explanation, I ruminate the thought of what my mother could have been if she had never married (though the same could go for my father also). The clothes - which still faintly hold that nostalgic childhood scent of my mother and that miscellaneous op shop smell - represent a stable presence. Soft, warm, and comforting. I would use these words to describe both my mother and clothing. Though, clothing can also be suffocating under the wrong conditions. My mother quit her job in accounting when my father moved our family to Brisbane for a job proposition. Since then, she has been a stay-at-home mother. To me, the clothes also symbolise the domestic chores my mother shouldered when leaving her own life behind. I do not doubt her love for me, that is why she has sacrificed so much. But I do believe she was a happier woman before married life. Although she had always wanted children, I still carry an unknown guilt of having burdened her.
The fabric wrapped tightly is almost symbolic of an Egyptian mummy. It is believed that the mummification process was used to stop decay - preserving body and soul. I perceive it as a perseverance of unconditional love despite however unstable our relationship may be or become.
My mother will forever be a paradox to me, and the clothes also representing a paradox of such.
Any strings or offcuts of hot-glue were cut off before final photographs were taken.
Materials: CD Cases & Discs, Various Cords/Wires, Metal Cutlery, Pens & Markers, Lightbulb, Porcelain & Glass, Sculpting Wire, Hot Glue, Super Glue
There were a lot more layers when it came to creating a sculpture of my father, in part of the fact I believe my relationship with him is the most complicated. A household with traditionally set beliefs and a daughter raised in a (mostly) progressive era was always bound to be complicated.
I started creating the sculpture similar to the sculpture of my mother. Using a very basic wire armature, I slotted items together to start with a torso, then hot glued them together. All items broken, wrapped beneath the cables and cords, I use the cords as a way to symbolise how my father uses the façade of work (engineering) to justify his often immature actions. -> I mostly repeated this process for the rest of the limbs and head, having to switch to super glue when the hot glue would not stick to the porcelain, plastic, or glass. It was a lot of trial and error, as well as waiting for something to fall apart before fixing it again with either sculpting wire or super glue.
To make a cable more secure I looped sculpting wire all around it so it would keep its structure. I had to fix the head of the sculpture using wire weaved through the torso as it was not able to be glued to anything else.
I gathered many items - both from his belongings and op shops - that would symbolise the enigma that is my father. Handy-man, 70's music taste, work-life balance, easily enraged, etc... I could list the many personality traits and aspects that make my father "dad," but I also chose these objects to symbolise that I only know him as dad. He is always working. I do not neglect to acknowledge he has worked hard to provide for my family, but in turn has left no time for family. My father is an engineer. He was always the person who had the most reservations about me pursuing a career in art.
My father's attitude hardened me as a person and made me more resilient. I may be quicker to anger than others - a bad habit I am in the midst of breaking - but the way in which he has treated me I have learnt to not tolerate nonsense from others.
Cold, calloused, sharp, and angry. As harsh as it is, those words come to mind when describing my father. Despite the warnings against using hazardous materials as part of the artwork (apologies), I felt it particularly necessary to portray my complex thoughts and feelings of my father. Aside from the knives and forks, the broken porcelain and glass held significant meaning to me. He has broken both the father's day glass and the porcelain bowl in a fit. Of course, he apologised eventually, and I had said I would fix the glass for him. I never got around to it and he never asked again. I suppose it is ironic to have a 'best dad in the world' shard of glass as the face of the sculpture considering the story behind it. It is symbolic of my relationship with him. I do not believe in being 'the best in the world' at anything, but he is still my father, and I love my father regardless.
Reflections: I did sustain minor cuts in making my sculpture, but I reflected on this. Tough love. That is what I have been raised with, especially with all the stereotypes surrounding Asian parents. The fact that my inanimate sculptures of my parents were still able to hurt me was ironic. Despite it all, I endured it to the end to finalise my project, reflective of unconditional love. I listen to my parents - and to the best of my abilities - help them regardless of our histories because they are family and I am not guilt-free from being hurtful to them either.
Still drawing from the fact my parents do not personally know me as much as I would like them to, I used a gold necklace they had once given me to bind their "hands" together and connect myself to the both of them. I only own silver jewelry. Regardless, the gold necklace stands in place for their wedding rings; rings that are supposed to connect them but feel more like a curse at this point.
I veered from my original idea of also creating the foetus of myself as a sculpture to instead make a 2D drawing. It is representative of my passion for art ever since I was able to pick up a pencil. I decided it worked better symbolically if I returned to my roots to create the foetus. Art is inherently me, which my parents seem to neglect when they keep suggesting that 'it is never too late to become a lawyer.'
I had made mistakes in making the sculptures top heavy, meaning I had to come up with a contraption to hang them up instead. I tied twine with tight tension between two chairs, tying the sculptures by their arms to the lines.
I then hung up a neutral coloured bed sheet behind the setup for my final photographs.
I faced the sculptures of my parents in opposite directions to each other to portray growing distance. They are posed to look like they are walking away from each other, in turn pulling me in both directions in the middle. The child they created together, trying to force beliefs onto me and turn me against the other.
Using Photoshop, I made a mockup composited image of my sculpture in a gallery space. I thought a gallery would be the most fitting environment considering my parents reservations on my choice to pursue art as a career.
My desired scale for the sculpture is 5'2 (~157cm), the exact height of both my parents. I feel there is a significant impact using a life-size scaled replica of my parents in these abstracted forms. It would be visually confronting.
Final Reflections & Title
Both of my parents willingly gave me items to use for my project. As much as I feel guilty for portraying them the way I have in this artwork, it is in part also the meaning of my sculpture. Familial relationships are complicated - they are rocky - they are rough - they make you feel like failure. But despite it all, there is an unconditional love that I can never rid of. I am grateful for my family and how far they have brought me. I would not be who I am without the childhood I had experienced. In turn, my final title for the artwork is Ethnically Raised, a play on words for 'ethically raised.' I pay homage to my parents despite our differences, acknowledging all the nuances that go into our relationships to each other.
I would reconsider the order in which I build my sculpture if given the chance. I would start from the legs up, so it could be weighted from the bottom rather than hung up. Otherwise, I would have also liked to have built the sculpture at my desired scale so I would be able to be more detailed with my use of objects.
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