Artist Statement
For this project, I would like to make an experience of history museum. Regularly when people go to the history museum, they will see many antiques and artifacts, which have labels next to them to describe the stories behind the objects. Sometimes people do not want to read the stories or feel sleepy to read labels. So I want to change the way of a story telling by projecting video on the objects, and to create an experience that the objects tell stories of themselves.
I am very interested in Chinese history and how do the history change and develop in present China. Also, I read some books about America feminism. These make me connect to how Chinese women fought against their social position and rights during the past one hundred years. I choose three-inch “lotus shoes” for my topic because this history was so shocking me for a long time. In ancient China, all the young girls have to bend their feet as small as they can and against their natural growing. Although they were so much painful, their parents told them they had to bend their feet for pleasing men in the future, so small feet was a symbol of female beauty in the past. However, many women could not go out or walk for a long time, and many of them even became disabled people. Their job was only raising children and doing housework. However, after about one hundred years revolution, Chinese woman become more and more powerful in the present. They have their social position and equal chance of education, and they do not have to be a housewife.
I use plaster to sculpt two “lotus shoes” because plaster makes me feel like disabled people that they have a limitation when they walk. I made two different videos, one is the woman in the past, and the other is the woman in the present. I use projection mapping technique to project these two videos on the shoes. Also, I use a button to trigger and switch two videos. Finally, I make an environment of a museum. I decorate a small dark space and present shoes and button on the pedestal like regular museum do. So when people come to the small space, they can switch between these two videos and choose which one they want to watch. No labels at all, viewers just come to explore and know stories of this object.
