BLOOD LINES
Graduation Solo Exhibtion Show at the UCSD Mandeville Annex Gallery, April 13-20 2012. Curated by Cindy Yeh, featuring art by Cindy Yeh, May Yang, and Ei Toshinari.
Flyer for opening reception-Using Photoshop
event recap poster/design- using photoshop and photograph taken at the event
Calvin Jalandoni performing MITOSIS at the BLOOD LINES opening night.
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This show explores the intricacies of known and unknown cultural histories. The pieces of ancestry that are kept secret or shunned into the boxes hidden from sight. I chose to utilize my cultural history, being Taiwanese American, as the main source of inspiration and concept. The show brings the viewer from the photographic realism of my past, to the way that these stories of the ghosts of my history were explained to me, and finally to my process of weaving and creating my own identity.
My father’s parents were married in Tainan, a rural fishing village, whose main survival depended upon the ocean that surrounded them. My grandmother and mother were both, when old enough, brought into manual labor for the textile factories, to sew for American name brands like Nordstrom or Mervyns. By taking known histories of Taiwanese women, and combining them with my own historical imagery, I aim to create commentary upon the reclamation of my cultural identity. The work recontextualizes the gendered and ageist processes that were brought upon my blood relatives. I also want to bring awareness of how current these issues are today: women around the world from the age of 10 to 60 are still limited to performing manual labor in the textile industry as a result of their gender.
Photographs of Cindy Yeh’s Work
Ghosts of My Past
Edited photographs from 1930s-1970s.
exact date is unknown
Using these photographs as inspiration for the painting series, these personally historical photographs were re-appropriated for the purpose of creating a dialogue between myself as an Asian American woman with the Asian woman and population history. I focused upon themes of americanization, deportation of labor, and environmental harmony of village life.
YU- Family
Oil on Canvas
2012
This re-appropriation of my grandfather and grandmother’s marriage represents my creation of my own historical past within a context of village life and my rural roots. I wanted to create a portrait of ghosts, of people that are directly related to me by blood but not by knowledge of familiarity. The only three with features are the only three I know of, my grandparents and my uncle in the upper right corner. Everyone else’s features are muddled but are unique and defined. I know them, but they don’t know me, I see them but they don’t see me.
Grandmother of Textile
Oil and Acylic on Canvas
2012
Mother of Textile
Oil and Acylic on Canvas
2012
These two paintings were re-appropriation of the photographs of my grandmother and mother from Taiwan during 1970 and 1980. I took both photographs out of their context and placed each woman in a textile factory, emphasizing the (un)naturalness of these machines in their lives. I wanted to revisit this past that is so closely tied to me through my heritage and cultural historical social background. I wanted to be proud but also critical of the womyn’s history of exported labor from the United States to islands like Taiwan.
LOOM; Process Performance
Wood, Hooks, Red String, Hair
2012
Over the span of 35 hours I constructed a frame with 44 hooks and a spool of red thread a loom. I wanted to create a experience of the process of weaving and textile creation for myself. I soon found that the ambition of creating a whole fabric was not possible, and I was left with a pattern and map of intersections instead. I then tied strands of my hair together into another form of string and wove into the textile itself. I wanted to interweave my DNA, identity, blood and emotions into the fabric. The performance was not recorded however the artifact is left, like how the textiles are always seen but the process and the laborer is never addressed.
Nest
Wire, Red Yarn, Hooks, String
2012
1555
Digital Video
2011
The body sculpture was made by hand and over the span of 20 hours. The tediousness and process is similar to LOOM, however the body was made for the direct reason of representation of the intercontectivity and beauty of inner systems that are within our bodies and blood lines/vessels. The body is a vessel, a vessel of emotions, and so for it to rest within a nest, a home is the most relaxing and final ending I can see for a body. The nest was site specific, using the ceiling, wall, and a found piece of wood. The red cushion was to invited the viewer to rest in the nest, to look up into the body, to see the shadows of the body on the wall, to realize the peacefulness and the emotions when addressing family, blood lines, home, and rest.
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Curated work also in the show chosen by Cindy Yeh.
Ei Toshinari, a recent graduate from the UCSD Visual Arts Department and his short film Artificial/Reality. The gallery also included artifacts of the film, as well as the actress Duy Nguyen’s presence the opening night.
May Yang, a undergraduate in the Visual Arts department and her Landscape installation. The gallery included a sand and dirt installation on the ground that viewers were allowed to walk through meditatively, sandwiched between two large projections of mountains and population of Thailand.
