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Scholarship Sculpture exemplars – 2022
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Scholarship
This Scholarship submission explores being a queer person and a child of first-generation immigrants. The focus on their "experience of identifying as LGBTQIA+ whilst being raised in a Chinese household outside of China (in New Zealand)" is described as the 'presence' of one's identity and the push-pull of different factors jostling for prominence. The candidate states that the work was "formed by my desire for an outlet to explore and work out my own experiences and emotions." The subject/theme is hefty and is examined through personal reflections translatable through sculptural and performative means.
In their workbook, the candidate analyses the importance of sculpture to their thinking. They understand sculpture to be unconventional or ‘lesser than’ painting in the eyes of their parents; therefore, a medium that can hold the emotional weight of the subject matter and be a "literal embodiment of failing to meet" parental expectations, potentially breaking ethical values such as "honesty, obedience, righteousness, harmony, etc." The accompanying workbook provides insightful and intelligent oversight of the background context and research, effectively supporting the portfolio work.
The integration of methods and approaches from other artists referenced is done with sophistication. The candidate speaks of how each practice has influenced the sculptural thinking within their work, analysing how particular processes speak to their ideas; for example, the use of braille in terms of visibility/invisibility and access (Fontcuberta), and the taping of broken plates as an act of restoration (de Vries). Symbolism is another critical strategy achieved through the incorporation of Chinese characters, and traditional, patterned material objects, fortune cookies, etc. Language is used to refer to values broken, like the newsprint banner work where the covering of the figure within the school setting is a potent comment on the place the candidate felt most comfortable expressing themself.
The level of analysis of media/material/process to concept and context is excellent. The candidate understands how sculpture can provoke meaning conceptually through multiplicity and mass. The fortune cookies associate in this way; they refer to "an assimilation into Western culture" and "uncertainty in identity". Materially, they enact the notion of the copy, iterative process, and repetition. The performance of walking on the cookies articulates sculptural and personal vulnerabilities, and the symbolic consequences of failure to conform.
Ideas of masculinity/femininity, material symbolism, and gender are explored in Hanfu ('Straitjacket'). Made at body scale from newsprint with screen-printed patterns, the work portrays the disjuncture between the queer community they are part of and their Chinese upbringing. The garment is well-made and, like the other works, approximates through its materiality the conflict felt. Over and over, actions that belong to sculpture are used to analyse ideas through the making processes and symbols employed.
The candidate has pursued a personally-challenging, social, ethical, political topic to create an extraordinary sculptural investigation that developed in parallel with their shifting desires, attitudes, and discoveries.