Strong and provocative themes are present from your first fashion collection to your latest artworks. Do you notice significant differences or evolutions from the beginning?
My instant reaction is – the most significant difference might just be age related confidence and how well I handle a project that is extremely ambitious.
When I made my probably most known collection (as people sometimes still mention that to me), it was in 2019 when I was 23 and on my final year of CSM BA fashion. It is also through that year I got to meet Reba Maybury as visiting tutor, who made my interest in fetishism and BDSM unveiled. At that stage of my life, I never thought about my theme around bdsm and fetishism to be provocative as it was developed from an extremely personal starting point, although realised at a quite late stage of my life while encountering Reba. Probably unlike many other stories behind a strong collection of CSM students, my one involves a lot self exploration, mentorship, and being naive about not knowing how ambitious it is in achieving a collection like this. I was just lucky enough to achieve a strong collection even with few things I couldn’t realise in-time due to technical difficulties in casting. Since I moved into fine art, I am more confident about the theme I’ve been working upon and witnessing the concept of fetishism has been broadened and becomes more subtle. In my latest work Threshold, I worked with multiple mediums including sound, game, sculpture and even an actual party happens in parallel to the show. From day one I know this is going to be an extremely ambitious project as it involved both new technologies I’m not that familiar with and sourcing external venues. This correct estimation really helped me to understand how much time, labour and knowledge this project would require to be realised from the beginning, which in return enabled me to achieve everything pretty close to the plan.
Your art is alive and performative . What would you like to see more in the world of contemporary art?
With my only few years’ performance experience across varied occasions – including show PV, performance night as part of bigger art programmes, or music and live event venues. My biggest reflection is that contrasting to those music venues, performing in relation to an art event is most likely to face situations with less sound and AV support as well as a problem with sound system or even licensing upon sound volume. As the live and performative element of my work is very much related to the quality of the sound, this would largely influence how well people would be able to experience it in the way I would like it to be. This is defiantly from a performers’ perspective, but it will be amazing to see those considerations to be put in place by the organisers.
The other thing that I would love to see more is to see how performance or live art can be nurtured into something that holds longevity while in display . Everytime when I performed as part of an art event, most likely I would be part of the show as well if there’s one. It is very interesting to observe the separation of participating a live event and of the show under the context of gallery display. Although it is not rare to see a lot performance artists to display their performing props and objects in their future exhibitions as a form of documentation, it is still out of my personal interest to question the tradition of this distinction. I kind of feel many other artists and curators may share this interest as well. I was extremely inspired to encounter Tiffany Wellington’s latest solo Grey Area with Studio/Chappel gallery in Deptford, London. The show almost contains nothing you could consider as made works, it contains assets that’s going to or has been used as part of past or future performances. I personally think this is a very brave and inspirational experimentation facilitated both by artist and curator that I would absolutely love to see more in the world of contemporary art today.
Themes of fetishism and overcoming limits find their place in museum and exhibition settings, as seen in Threshold. Tell us about this recent work and what it reveals about you and your vision.
In Threshold, the gallery space is transformed into an extracted scene from underground rave. Comprising of an immersive speaker wall installation, a large-scale DJ table-like sculpture, two light boxes, and a game that mapped upon the reality of the space, Threshold explores fetishism towards high bpm (speed) and intensified physical workouts relating to the idea of edging within the the narrative of hardcore rave and/or dance floor. Threshold also extends beyond the gallery space into a virtual game that mapped upon the physical install and a rave party with an expansive artistic interest upon power and consistency relating to varied sites and their history.
Do you already have your next step in mind? Is there a particular project or message you want to work on?
There are few shows I’ve been penciled in, which I have something to work towards. But also I really truly feel that my “plan” for next year in my mind should be a reflective one. I’ve carried on studying for many years since fashion and then now fine art, but I haven’t really had a time to be out of uni. Also at the same time, with becoming a fine art practitioner, there’s quite a lot shared confusions and challenges upon how to sustain, full-time or part-time making art, in what pace to produce, etc. I don’t necessary see those questions to be negative ones, instead I really want to take the advantage of freshly out of uni to reflect those. I also started a curatorial project called DUMP with Yu Li, which we hope to tackle issues of artwork storage due to studio move outs, end of uni, or more varied issues our young artist community experienced collectively.