
Twenty-one (2023.11)
Oil Pastel on Wool Sweater, Body Print on Paper
My drawings examine the idea of subjectivity through the metaphysical interconnectedness of female subjects represented by the reflected and extended physical bodies. To Gunther Kress's quote “the medium of inscription changes the text”, my recent research on materiality and the medium is presented through my oil pastel drawing Twenty-One (2023). Familiarized with traditional Chinese calligraphy which uses a wool brush, I extend the material of the wool from a brush into a sweater. By coloring the Forever 21 white wool sweater blue and wearing it, I repeatedly threw my twenty-one-year-old body as brushstrokes onto the paper and presented an embodiment within the materiality. The piece is an adaptation of Julio Cortazar's essay "Don't Blame Anyone" in expressing one's entanglement and impasse by the reality that one contrived and enforced on one's initiative. Twenty-One functions as my challenge to Yves Klein's Anthropometry of the Blue Period (1960). By opposing Klein's misogynist approach of using naked female bodies as a white male artist, I assert a feminist attitude with my active female body clothed with a sweater. Blue refers to detachment in Buddhism, and this piece also documents my effort in confronting my mental struggle for the entire twenty-one-year-old that feels a bit distant as I turned twenty-two a month after this piece was completed.








