Kings, Dukes, Generals, Ministers

The second solo came along a lot sooner than I thought, considering the first one took me 5 years to work up the courage. But when inspiration hits, there’s nothing to do but seize the day!

Opening of Kings, Dukes, Generals, Ministers launched by Luise Guest (Writer, Art Educator, Researcher) at Art Atrium

Opportunities for solo exhibition are incredibly valuable for an artist. I used to feel intimidated by the mere thought of them and hum and haw at the idea of having one. Even when I had already been in a number of group exhibitions and had the chance to show internationally, it was undeniable that solos terrified me.

They drum up so many insecurities. Will I have enough work? Will my work be good enough? Will people come just for me? Will I live up to expectations? All these questions feel so defining and the stakes feel like they rest solely on your shoulders.

Kilmarnock Forge, Orange NSW Australia

But they also provide the challenge to become a better artist. To push past limits. To take that course in blacksmithing, to upskill my welding, to learn and experiment with new materials. The intensity of those months before a solo often opens the doors to creativity.

Although the preparation for solos can sometimes feel painful, there are also moments of intense joy and freedom and growth.

So it was pretty fitting for the theme of Kings, Dukes, Generals, Ministers to be one of transformation and the fulfilment of potential through toil and diligence.

The title of the exhibition comes from the Chinese saying: “Kings, dukes, generals, ministers are made and not born.” It refers to a number of occasions within Chinese history where those from humble origins have challenged the status quo, with their labour and cunning, rising to mantles of power and prestige.

One of the hero pieces of this exhibition is Axe: The Weight of Battle, a proto-copy of a bronze battle-axe found in the tomb of Fu Hao: a priestess, queen and war general from the Shang Dynasty 1200 BC China. The dimensions and details of this glass axe head is identical to the bronze original (39.5 x 37 cm, weighing 9kgs) as I found it incredible how heavy and unwieldy it was to imagine that a woman carried this during battle. Yet, one did.

It tells a story of the unsuspecting power and potential often underestimated/overlooked characters have within them. A power that is very necessary to access for women as they fight for bodily autonomy along with many other metaphorical and non metaphorical battles happening around the world. It’s important to believe that we still have the power to create change despite the status quo.

This exhibition contains many of my hopes as an artist but also as a human living in the year 2022.

Axe: The Weight of Battle 2022

First Solo: Facing the Fear

February, 2021. Opening night of Glass Armours at Gallery Lane Cove.

We must be getting somewhat used to how my entries here are generally after the fact (what can I say journaling can be hard and it’s always best to live in the moment when it’s happening right?) But in a way, writing it after the fact allows me some time to process and reflect deeply on all that’s happened rather than just give a recount.

I remember when Rachael Kiang (the manager and curator of Gallery Lane Cove) first approached me in September last year (2020) to invite me to do a solo exhibition at her gallery as part of a 4 venue program, now known as the Lunar North Confluence, which focuses on the practices of Chinese Australian artists.

I went in for an initial meet and greet, to see the space that was going to be allocated to me 5 months later and I remember the absolute excitement and dread that ensued in that week. I couldn’t sleep for days agonizing over how big the space was and how small my works would look in a 9 by 9 meter room. Especially considering how my worst nightmare as an artist is having a solo exhibition and not having enough work to hold up the space so I had been putting off having a solo for a really long time as I worked to develop a body of work I could be proud of. But the space was gorgeous and I had some time, 5 months was a little tight working with glass where one artwork could easily take half a year to make, but as they say time waits just long enough for those who use it wisely.

The next 5 months were intense.

I don’t think I have ever worked so hard in my life. Everyday I was sculpting, molding, polishing, hammering, carving and making; working desperately towards a deadline. It was liberating. Before then I didn’t realized how tied down I felt by all the proposal and submissions I was writing up (one big surprise about being an artist is that it requires an inordinate amount of writing and not just writing, rejection after putting all the time into a proposal), it was all eating into my time and energy for actually making art. It’s hard to be motivated when you don’t know how or where you will exhibit your work after you’ve made it. So now that I had a vision to work towards I felt free. Ideas flowed forth, it gave me a chance to dream again and motivation to work on all those projects I had on the back burner came in torrents.

But even if the spirit was high, sometimes your body just can’t keep up though I surprised myself with how many times I managed to coax my body past its limits, constantly telling myself I can rest in March when everything was well and truly done. That now was the time to do and I can crash into my burnout later. It’s amazing what a deadline will do for you. So if you’re a young artist like myself, give yourself a chance and take on an ambitious project that you care about and you’ll be amazed by how capable you actually are.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see all my work in one place and how much work it actually took to put it all up (there was a lot of shuffling around and considering and minds being changed). Working on this exhibition made me think of space in a whole new dimension and I am so lucky to have the help of experienced art installers and a curator like Rachael Kiang who understood the space intimately and could intuitively figure out how the audience would feel navigating the exhibition. I had general suggestions of how I would like the work to be seen - the Birdsong series a little segmented away from the other pieces and the Portal at the entrance of the exhibition there to both greet and challenge the audience to enter the space as it is the façade that guards my inner thoughts, which every piece in the exhibition is.

After 3 full days of install (where Jenna, Jo, my dad and I worked tirelessly), everything was up and I wondered the room alone in almost a trance. It was strange thinking that this was 5 years of work and hard to believe that these were all my creations that I have sweated, bled and cried over haha. There was an indescribable joy in my heart and I think it was a sense of belonging. A moment of ‘oh’. I don’t know how to describe it, I think if I did it would be gone.

The exhibition itself was an amazing experience but not for the reasons I expected. At the opening I saw curators, artists and art enthusiasts but I also saw people I had not seen in a decade, my friends from all the different social circles that I had engaged in at one point of my life came and for me it was like a colliding of worlds. I imagine it was what a wedding would feel like, a gathering of all the people you know who want to support you. I didn’t even know I had so many friends! I felt privileged to have created a space for people who may never have otherwise met talk and connect. Because what is an exhibition good for if not to spark conversation? What is a conversation good for if not to make friends out of strangers?

Glass Armours

NC QIN SOLO EXHIBITION

3 - 27 February 2021, Gallery Lane Cove

This exhibition focuses on the complexity of identity, separating our ego from our self into a physical manifestation of the heavy glass armour that we carry in our lives. Despite the project being composed of glass sculptural objects, my work is always about the humanity and the story of the piece, the object never quite the central subject matter but letting itself be shaped around an absent human subject. The cast glass armour is constructed with the cultural acknowledgement of the symbology and iconography of armours to Asian culture; as a mark of status and an object of familial and patriotic pride and expectation. By using glass to create the armour I render it ineffective in its mechanism for defence, with the aim of subverting its meaning and to explore themes of guilt, shame and repression that are often sourced from frustrated efforts to attain an ideal that is fostered by expectation, particularly within Asian social structures.

SKETCHES: BLESSING THE WAY OF BIRTH AND LIFE with Lana - (2) FRIDA KAHLO

Last Sunday I experienced my first baby shower and blessingways event. I started off the morning a little bit anxious, I’ve done life sketching before but never in such an intimate sphere. I would be entering a circle of love and care but as a stranger, an outsider, there to witness and record. I had prepared my materials the night before to cut down on any clumsiness on the day, I had with me: 2x fine artline pens, 2x medium aquash brushes filled with premixed ink, a roll of pencils and 2x stacks of 216gsm paper (just in case I messed up).

To give you some background, I was a surprise organized by Lana for the Momma to be (we’ll call her M). Lana is a close friend of M, and she had contact me only days before for this customized live sketching session. I was to rock up and sketch the blessingways ceremony (conducted by Lana from the Parents Village) and if M was comfortable, squeeze in a few nude drawings as well. (Luckily, being an petite young woman worked in my favour this time!)

Oftentimes we come across a mat of flowers and talks of energy beads and label it as hippie, I’m guilty of this myself. But it’s not until one actually experiences one of these understated rituals themselves that they truly grasp the meaning of them. It was an experience that made me see not only the magnitude of a birth that was coming but also the circle of love and support the new mother had around her, but more importantly it was a ritual that would make her see this without any doubt.

It starts off with Lana setting the tone, expressing that this was a safe place where everyone was not only allowed to be honest and free with the emotions but would be accepted with love. Everyone present would not only be giving support but also receiving it in turn.

A cute little detail in the circle was the presence of the mother with the newborn baby sitting directly opposite the mother to be. She blessed the water with happiness and courage along with her infant daughter.

This was the last ritual. Here M, the mother with the flower crown holds a bundle of red string, in which she wings around the wrist of each woman present 3 times. When the bundle arrives back the web of support she has around is made visible to her giving her warmth and strength.

The first ritual utilizes Dr Masaru Emoto’s thought experiments with water. Where positive and negative thoughts are experienced by water and over time changes their molecular structure, one prominent among them is the rice experiment. It works quite simply, one separates a batch of cooked rice into three containers label love, hate and ignore, speaking loving and encouraging thoughts to the one labeled love, spewing angry and hateful messages to the one labeled hate and the last jar was to be ignored. By the end of two months the rice in the one labeled love still looked edible for something left out of the fridge for two months but the ones labeled hate and ignore were rife with mold. The most common way to cook rice is with 2 parts water making it around 66% water based; just as Humans are 60% water, and the brain and heart is 73%.

In this ritual, Lana presents a cup of water that is passed around the circle. Each person blesses the water with a loving quality they wish upon the unborn baby, which the mother drinks at its zenith.

My personal favourite was the bead ritual, where a string was passed around the circle and each of the women in the circle would recite qualities that they admire about M and think will help her in birthing the child, adding a bead for each quality. The necklace was then tied up and given to M, being something that she could hold onto during the birth, reminding her of the characteristicsinnate in her and the love and support of her friends present with her.

Although I was only present in the capacity as an artist, I was touched by this gentle yet strong show of friendship as everyone opened up about what they loved about each other and allowed themselves to be vulnerable. I had only known them for two hours but I feel so privileged to be there for such an intimate moment that could only be cultivated by the trial of time. As I scribbled onto paper hoping to record the connection, I was strongly reminded by my own circle of friends who are constantly with me whether present or not. I was reminded by how they were there in times of need and how their belief in the person I am carried me through.

If you're an expecting mother or know someone who will be, I highly recommend this blessing way service that The Parents Village provides. It's truly empowering to witness and I can only imagine that it is even more so to be involved in the circle. 

To end this entry, I will be presenting the Inspiration of the Week, nominated by Lana: Frida Kahlo, a woman who coincidentally also sports a flower crown on her head.

Here, it might surprise you because I've talked so much about the bold, direct gaze of Frida, but here, her gaze is actually depicted away from the audience into her inner world. This is simply because I love creating portraits of greater intimacy. where the sitter does not feel a need to put a face on to deal with their outer world.

Most of us know Frida Kahlo as the Mexican artist with the monobrow, which she depicted consistently in her self-portraits. As a child who first saw her paintings on a poster up in the art classroom wall, I was not impressed. I had a monobrow myself, which while I was not bothered by, it wasn’t my standard of beauty either and there was too much yellow in my opinion (I have an irrational dislike of the colour yellow, it probably won’t surprise you that when I first saw Van Gogh I wasn’t too impressed either lol, though it’s since become one of favourites). But as I revisited her story when I was older, I saw past the bold, cool glare that she is always challenging the audience with and I saw a character of great emotional complexity and sensitivity.

It reminds me of a small anecdote Carlos Fuentes once made on their first meeting of Frida Kahlo.

Right in the middle of the overture in an Opera production, played in The Palace of Fine Arts, New Mexico a noise invaded the theatre that silenced even the orchestra. When everyone’s attention turned to the balcony where the noise came from they were greeted by the regal entrance of Frida Kahlo bedecked in jewels, necklaces, rings, bracelets and everything in between, all jangling with their own tune. To the casual observers it was all too ostentatious, but if you knew her and her story, then maybe you would be able to guess that they were there to distract attention from the weakness of her body. Frida had survived polio as a child, she had survived a bus accident in her adolescence that left her pelvis fractured and speared by an iron handrail. But just as her gaze was always firm to hide the thoughts inside, she dressed and carried herself in a way that made transcend her physical world.