The Wild Tangle
Browsing through archival images of pre-modern East Asian societies, I was struck by how women’s hairstyles were documented. The way their backs were captured, frozen in time, reminded me of specimens – human counterparts to those landmark miniatures sold in souvenir shops. Their subjectivity was reduced to an oriental symbol, drained in time and leaving behind only an empty shell.
I paint over these images with rice, drawing upon narratives surrounding women’s hair in mythologies, religions and history. In these stories, hair often becomes a portal to hidden realms or a source of sustenance and energy. Through my overpainting, the narratives are translated into an imitation of primitive pattern. Rice, a symbol closely related to the East Asian body, becomes the blood and flesh that reanimates these patterns, resurrecting the underlying oriental symbols with a visceral sensation.
Browsing through archival images of pre-modern East Asian societies, I was struck by how women’s hairstyles were documented. The way their backs were captured, frozen in time, reminded me of specimens – human counterparts to those landmark miniatures sold in souvenir shops. Their subjectivity was reduced to an oriental symbol, drained in time and leaving behind only an empty shell.
I paint over these images with rice, drawing upon narratives surrounding women’s hair in mythologies, religions and history. In these stories, hair often becomes a portal to hidden realms or a source of sustenance and energy. Through my overpainting, the narratives are translated into an imitation of primitive pattern. Rice, a symbol closely related to the East Asian body, becomes the blood and flesh that reanimates these patterns, resurrecting the underlying oriental symbols with a visceral sensation.
