ArtsXpose #4 – Jingyi Zhou
Title of Event: Cleveland Museum of Art
Date & Time of Event: Saturday April 9th, 2022
Location of Event: Cleveland, Ohio
Type of event: Art Gallery
Jingyi Zhou – Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment 2
I choose to look at Ai Weiwei, who is a an outspoken human rights activist, and often uses sculpture as his means of communicating to the public. He even said that being an artist gives him more freedom to talk about politics, because people will accept art more than simply politics.
In one of his interviews, Ai Weiwei talks about a project which has 2000 backpacks symbolizing the 2000 students died in an earthquake. The backpacks are neatly organized in huge blocks, and a sound device reads out all the names of the students. The sculpture is called Untitled (2011), and the soundtrack is called Remembrance (2010). Through this project, Ai Weiwei is trying to convey a sense of empathy through directly viewing something that’s closely related to these students – backpacks. But I find Ai Weiwei’s work a little bit confusing, because some of them are highly repetitious, and uses ready-made materials. This is very similar to Duchamp’s works, who’s famous for the urinal. I don’t see a lot of point in art in both of the artists.
Jingyi Zhou – Project 3 part 3&4
For this project, I’m borrowing the symmetric features from Tracey Sarsfield’s Reflected. I like the interconnection from the two similar figures, and the wires connecting them. For my own project, I’ll develop a 3-stage human relationship process, and incorporate the symmetric structure.
Project 3 – Jingyi Zhou
The question/problem I’ll explore is human relationships.
I ask myself these questions frequently: What defines a relationship? What promotes a relationship? What undermines a relationship? Am I doing this right with xxx?
Often times, I find myself being either too nice or too mean on other people. It’s so hard to find a balance in between those two conditions. It’s also hard for me to being very open to someone, like starting a new friendship/romantic relationship.
Human interaction is so confusing yet fascinating. You can hate or like a person in seconds, based on something they say or do. Sometimes you try too hard to maintain a relationship. But in the end, both parties are exhausted. So, what would be a healthy and sustainable mode of human relationship?
10 tangible people/places/things
postcards/letters/texting screenshots
school/office/home
friend/lover/enemy/stranger/boss/professor
ArtsXpose #3- Jingyi Zhou
Title of Event: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bus Trip
Date & Time of Event: Saturday April 2nd, 2022
Location of Event: New York
Type of event: Art Gallery
Jingyi Zhou – Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment
I watched several videos from Lynn Hershman Leeson. The first impression I had with Lynn is that she as a woman tried to break the stereotypes of male-artist-dominance in the art world. She talked about her work was rejected because “Women artists didn’t make a good investment.”, and UCLA in the 70s closed her exhibition because they thought media was not officially art. This experience of rejection gave her courage and motivation to create more rick bodies of work.
Then I discovered that Lynn often uses multidisciplinary mediums in her work, such as sound, sculpture, painting, etc. Some of them are interactive, creating links between the audiences and artwork, or even between museums. She explores the roles that technology, media, and artifice play in society. Like she said, she wishes to “Confronts where we are in the society”.
For me, an interesting yet somewhat confusing work is her performance art in which she dressed up as Roberta, a fictious character that even had her own bank account and credit card. Roberta existed from 1972 to 1979. She is based in a hotel, and Lynn generated a scene that reflects certain elements from the real world. Roberta even posted roommate ads on local newspaper. I’m a bit confused with this interacting with the actual world part, because I think this might create confusion and inconvenience for the people who actually wish to find a roommate and devote some resources and attention to Roberta. However, this is quite mind-opening and creative.
Jingyi Zhou – Project 2 Part 4
Jingyi Zhou – Project 2
- The shrine will be focused on cats, because I’ve always been attracted to the mysteriousness of cats. I love its strength, spontaneity, cuteness, elegance, and independence, and I’m especially drawn to their life style, living in the moment and looks chill all the time. Sometimes in life, I couldn’t balance work and life, and end up stressing myself too much. So I would like to celebrate those characteristics of cats using the form of a shrine in this project. I will probably make several visual representations of these characteristics and arrange them in an organic way. The audience will be both myself and everyone who sees this, because the theme won’t be hard to comprehend, and people are generally familiar with cat. (since cat is the second most popular pets in the US)
3.
Ginger Cat – Edge Sculpture
Workshop/CraftsmanMatt Buckley / Edge Studio
I love how the sculpture captures both motion and emotion of the cat using swirls and lines.