In the last 5 diptychs, I mostly focused on the obvious elements that directly attached to the photography I found. So for the additional diptychs, I chose to focus more on the idea of “CONTRAST”. The contrast between dark and white, evil and angel.

I’m trying to restore the circumstances in the original photography. The black mask represents the man who still keeps his table manners (attitude of life) even though he reduced to a coal miner after British Great Depression. The white mask represent his wife who seems extremely tired but still support his husband.

I used acrylic (white and black) to painted two masks and used black and clear tapes taped the whole mask intending to make a texture.

I chose to use a traditional Chinese calligraphies, which called small seal script. The first letter is “逆“, which means disobey. Just like the coal miner, who still tries to be who he was. Compare to “逆“, ”从“ is more likely to describe his wife. Always support her husband, also accept the changes of life even though we can see so much tiredness from her eyes.

“逆“ in small seal script

The disobey from the man’s eyes.

I always obsessed with variety textures, therefore I chose to make a texture of wallpaper.

Material: Glue gun/ ink/ plastic sheets

#1 I inked one of the glue gun textile to black, to represent the whole family was destroyed by the great depression.

I did some researches of the Victorian pattern wallpaper, and finally found a pattern I like

 Making process: inked the glue gun pattern texture

1. What is your topic and how has it evolved/changed after all the diptychs you’ve created? 

My topic was “Emotion” , but after I made all 5 diptychs. I found out my topic was actually more towards to “Class”. 

1. What materials did you explore that were the most successful at supporting your topic? 

I think the most successful material are golden leaf and charcoal, because these two materials could represent the difference of wealthy and poverty.

1. What materials did you explore that failed to support your topic or were not very good and supporting the content?

I think compare to other materials, my fabric diptych didn’t turned out really well, because I didn’t combine it with other materials.

Write a new paragraph explaining what different contexts (history, politics, fashion, art, economics, environment, etc.) your topic is apart of.

My topic attaches to history, politics and economics. In my original photography, after the British Great Depression, the wealthy man lost his job become a coal miner. This photography was shot in 1937, few years after the British great depression. People lost their jobs, the economy was destroyed by the great depression.