Project: STRANGENESS ATTACK
Time: 2012 still going Medium: Photography Dimension and quantity: 120cm x 96cm 12pcs Artist statement: I'm from Taiwan, a small island in east Asia. The formal name of Taiwan is in fact "Republic of China". Yes she is China, but no, she is not the China that people think about which is big and communistic. The confusing "China vs China" situation results from the civil war in 1949 and this situation causes a lot of issues on self-identifing. However people in Taiwan and mainland China basically share the same cultural origin and the same language. I moved to Beijing in 2011 with some unverified imaginations of "China". Life there is full of surprises. Of course it's not too hard for me to blend in since we look the same and speak the same. But gradually I feel the indescribable oddity in daily life more and more. The feelings are minor and obscure. It is not feeling about some obvious differences which different people always have and you could easily tell. They are something you feel nothing wrong at first glance but you gradually feel something wrong afterward. Just like copying pictures with a transparent paper: the two pictures would look the same but you always feel they are different. These little "strangeness attacks" interest me a lot. It's interesting to think what makes them. 60 years of different polities? Maybe. Different educations? Maybe. Different financial situations? Maybe. While thinking about the causes, I try to catch those feelings with my camera as well. These pictures are definitely not faithful depictions. Yet they are not manipulated as well. Those are my real life in Beijing and I tried to shoot them as in the "strangeness attacking" moments. |