I am someone who uses clay to unfold my narratives, because the material serves as a great tool and user’s manual to explain the most precious time for me. When I try to relate how I see my environment changed, accepted, given up, or explained based on how I feel, I pay attention to contrasting colors, sounds, and forms from inside and outside the pieces, and how they contradict each other.
While coiling creates the form, the external texture is created by slip and glaze, as the contrasting materials come up against the original ceramic material. I think that the way such contrasting materials confront each other is exactly like how different human emotions and feelings confront each other. This conviction became all the stronger when I studied in Taiwan and joined an artist-in-residence program in the U.S., having to meet people from different cultures. At first, I tried to learn how different they were from me. Then I learned to understand and analyze myself, struggling to develop my own identity.
My recent projects are about revealing and concealing. My work approach in “Self-Portrait of Emotions” is to segregate emotions to reveal different aspects from the inside and outside. Contradictory textures are used to show how different emotions are expressed.
I try to understand others and find harmony, then I separate myself from them to truly understand myself, or simply avoid them and hide myself from them. The feeling I develop from such repeated interactions is the motivation of my work, and hopefully, how I might maintain more flexible approaches.