artist residency
EXPERIENCE & EXPERIMENTATION
During summer break, I came across the opportunity to join an artist residency at the UAL Space at Millbank. It happened between the second week of July until the end of August, and it was my first residency experience.
We were offered a flexible work space — I could work in an environment together with other residents as well as have my own private/individual room —, allowing me to create new dialogues and to reflect about my own practice. Each resident could focus on whatever they wanted to do — an outcome from the residency wasn’t a requirement. We were encouraged to propose events, workshops or exhibitions during the period, to use the space freely and in our favor, which resulted in very enriching conversations with students from other courses and colleges, as well as with the Millbank Team.
In the beginning of the residency, I decided I wanted to create and finish one project related to the subject of vulnerability. However, as time passed, I realized it would be more useful, for me, to spend that period experimenting, sketching and reflecting about my practice and research, without aiming for a specific outcome. I realized I could keep my initial ideas for the research festival and for new works that I was already planning to make during Unit 3.
Therefore, I spent my days in Millbank sketching, experimenting, people-watching and having conversations about the creative industries and about my own research on intimacy. I started to reflect further on the materiality of the tracing paper and how the process of layering created different effects and expressions in my work. Even though this is not new within my practice, I had more time to reflect on it. By layering, the lines get entangled and sometimes the figurative image becomes hard to be seen — or at least to be seen in the same way as before. This enhances the idea of liminality that I propose in my work, it stretches the possible meanings and symbolisms around the line that constructs the figures. This process of layering was also a study for my research festival project, as I aim to build an artist book that is related with the idea of the book pages as layers of a human being, with the act of going through the pages symbolizing going further inside and intimately into another being.
As I had to commute to get to Millbank, I was offered the possibility of people-watching every time I was heading to the studio, which is something that deeply inspires the reflections surrounding my practice in the context of everyday life. By watching people on the bus and on the streets, in those fleeting moments of transit, I was able to think about the small encounters of the everyday and got the opportunity to practice some sketching again.
Sketches, 2024
PRACTICE & RESEARCH
At the same time I was sketching other people, I also focused my attention on how I was feeling recently. That, in touch with the experimentation of layers, made me pay closer attention to the material that I was working with and the work Daily reminder was developed (2024, pen on tracing paper, masking tape, variable dimensions).
The image of the hands is very attractive to me, personally. I’m still not completely sure why that is. I wonder if it’s the act of touch, if it’s the aspect of being able to connect with others in a physical sense, or if it’s a metaphor for something else. It is also what makes me feel present in the world, by being able to touch, to feel with my body, to hold, to secure. Recently I read a quote from the author Ocean Vuong that deeply resonated with me: “Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?”. The quote is from the book On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), but I came across it by reading an art newspaper online, that was presenting a photography exhibition at Princeton University Art Museum: “Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?”: Photography and Touch.
It’s so delicate, yet so powerful when there’s the moment of encounter — with someone, with something, or even with oneself. Also, the moment of encounter is momentarily and it is doomed to change in seconds — we lose control of time. It is a fleeting encounter, between my body and the other person’s, between those contour lines from our physical beings that extend and tangle with each other. It becomes a collective experience.
With that, by creating layers to evoke this constant movement and change that exist, I collected a variety of drawings that now compose the work. The color of the paper reminds me of “post-it” paper, making me think of to-do lists, or of a tool that is used informally to write random notes or make random scribbles while doing something else. I wanted to explore this common place of the everyday, those snippets of the daily life that seem so banal that sometimes go unnoticed.
Therefore, Daily reminder comes as a personal reflection of what I wish to be reminded to do constantly: to touch, to share intimacies, to express affection and to feel present in the world with my own physical existence.
I didn’t use the post-it paper to create the work because I was aiming for resemblance, for something that is not really what it seems, in the essence. Also, I wanted to keep the translucent aspect of the tracing paper, to be able to create the layering and to be able to add another element of the “everydayness” — the masking tape —, hopefully evoking an intimate setting, or at least a more casual feeling of display.
Daily reminder, 2024. Ink pen on tracing paper, masking tape. Variable dimensions.
EXHIBITION
Apart from the writings, sketches and this work that I developed during my residency period, I also got the opportunity to join a group exhibition in the end, with some of the residents and with artists from outside of UAL. Converging Paths: Shared Visions brought together works of seven artists, from a variety of backgrounds (fine art, illustration, textile) and from different colleges (Camberwell, Chelsea, and Royal College of Arts). I was invited to join by the curators Shih-Han Chou, Amanda Hsunyi Huang and Hyeyeon Chung.
In this exhibition, I displayed three of my previous works: Distant confluences, Daydream and Unknown path. It was, for me, an opportunity to think about my work in a different context — in different modes of display, in a different space, slightly changing the communication with the public. This was extremely enriching in the sense of realizing new possibilities inside the works I thought were already finished and well resolved. It made me realise that they can always be in process, even if just in relation to the display and installation. It feels as if there’ll always be a possibility for change, for movement, for transition, even if just by changing the space around it. It’s almost as if this characteristic/way of existing connected even more with my practice, as those are some of the reflections I try to bring within the work.
For Unknown path, a piece from my Unit 1, we — the curators in dialogue with me — decided to install it by hanging it from the wall, as if it is breaking the trajectory that I created with the thread in the first place. I believe that it added a layer of meaning to the work, however, I’m still trying to reflect on it and find a way to explain my feelings towards it again.
With Daydream — the piece I’ve previously exhibited at Copeland Gallery —, instead of installing it with needles to evoke the presence of the process of stitching, we’ve decided to use magnets to display the fabric on the wall. Even though the first installation keeps being my personal favorite, because of the charged-meaning object, this second installation created more distance from the wall (leaving the fabric with a more flowy quality) and it was a safer option both for the work itself (not damaging/piercing through the fabric) and for the display (with less possibility of the fabric ripping and consequently falling on the floor).
I couldn’t exhibit Distant confluences with the original metal frame, since the structure was stored in our new studio at Wilson Road — and we didn’t have access to the building during the summer break. Therefore, we tried to think of new solutions to be able to exhibit it at Millbank. As we really wanted to keep the aspect of being able to walk around the work, to use the translucent aspect as the main element in relation to the space and the works around it, we decided to hang it from the ceiling. The presence of metal panels on the ceiling of the space was very fortunate, since we were able to install it using the same original magnets that I used to install it in the metal frame structure.
However, wanting to take the opportunity to experiment on how changing the display could change some meanings of the work, I decided to create layers between the images not only in the process of walking around it — where, at some point, the images would be layered depending on the viewer’s perspective and angle —, but by already layering them in the installation process — placing one fabric in front of the other. A special touch with this was the possibility of leaving a distance between the pieces, allowing people to walk inside the narrow path between the fabrics, allowing them to navigate the “inside” part of it.
As the work was made thinking and reflecting on the threshold space between approximation and distance, presence and absence, it expanded to the idea of interior and exterior — interior of the object, of the stitching, of the portrait, of someone; almost as if it was a path of vulnerability opening up for others to see through.
I believe that by having this opportunity of displaying my works in a new context was something that connected directly to my thoughts on vulnerability and layers that came to me very deeply during the residency period. From that experience, I felt that I wanted to continue focusing my research on those aspects for my Unit 3, as well as for the Research Festival’s book that I’ll present later in November.
Converging Paths: Shared Visions exhibition view, 2024
Converging Paths: Shared Visions exhibition view, 2024. Photos by Dennis Ngan