YIKO LI
INTERVIEWS WITH
SCARLETT ZENG
Introduction
Scarlett is a designer in progress who studies at Parsons School of Design. As a freshman in college, she recently moved to New York City from her hometown Chongqing, China. In this interview, Yiko Li is going to chat with Scarlett about her significant dreams and her dream journal project from her studio art class to further explore her personality as an artist.
The Dream
Scarlett dreamed about people chasing her repeatedly in the past years. The last dream that she had about was her mom holding a knife chasing after her. “My mom was holding a chopping knife while my dad was trying to stop the conflict, I went into a room and tried to avoid the threaten feeling from my mom. The room I went into was shabby, and the wooden furniture in the room was all rotten, the setting made me felt even more vulnerable.”
Interview
YL: Did anything happen before in real life that makes you feel the same way with this dream you have?
SZ: There was one time that I was eating lunch with my mom and one of my high school friends at my house. My friend and I were complaining about one teacher that I really dislike and I unconsciously used a bad word in my sentence when I got too emotional. After the word came out from my mouth, I started to notice that my mom’s face turned red and unusual. I got up and ran into my bedroom because I was scared. My mom followed me to the room after I shut the door, she was knocking so hard while shouting at me, and it made me felt like the door might break.
YL: You shared one of the similar dreams that you had when we were in seminar class, you described that you were holding a sword during a battle back in ancient time and there were other soldiers chasing behind you. Do these two dreams have the exact same feeling or there was something different in between?
SZ: The soldiers were surrounding me instead of chasing me, and I was trapped in the middle. Even I was stacked at the stomach and lying on the ground bleeding I was still alive. They are not the same and they have two different feelings, but they are both the feelings that I do not like.
YL: Does your mom pressures you? How would you describe your family relationship?
SZ: She was giving me lots of pressure when I was younger, she wants me to behave well all the time and do well in school. Now she does not pressure me anymore, but I’m the one who is constantly giving myself pressure; I’m never satisfied with anything, there is always room for improvement for everything. We have a good family relationship; it’s nothing like what I dreamed.
YL: What is the similarity between your dreams and real life?
SZ: Sometimes I am not satisfied with myself; I could have done better for many things. I think this feeling that I have about myself can be related back to the dream that I had that I wasn’t able to holds the sword because I’m powerless.
YL: Relate back to the dream that we were first talking about; the feeling of being chased can be interpreted as the sense of pressure that you are constantly giving to yourself? Or it might also related to the way that you use to deal with your mom’s emotional moments?
SZ: Yes, definitely. My mom also uses intense language on a daily basis. My dad and I are used to it, but I still feel hurt by it often times.
YL: The chopping knife that your mom was holding in your dream can be seen as an item that is common for every family. Do you think this is an indication of the threatened feeling that you have everyday either from your mom or yourself?
SZ: I didn’t pay attention to that before, but now I think it is. The feeling becomes subconscious and it tends to be ignored.
YL: I want to know more about you other than your dreams, who are you as an artist/designer? What ideas do you try to convey through your work?
SZ: I am not sure about what field of design I am going to focus on yet. I am on my way of defining who I am as a designer. I like doing art because those images that I draw are my way of expressing myself.
YL: What is your plan for your college? Why do you choose to come to Parsons?
SZ: I think college for me is like knowing more about myself what I can do and what I wish myself to become. People in college have more desire to improve and more goals that they set for themselves when they are more knowledgeable. That is why people feel ignorant as they learn more.
YL: I totally agree with your point of view that the people in college have a bit more sense of direction that they are heading, in terms of future planning. What you have talked about in the previous question that I asked you; you were somehow contradicting yourself by saying the last part about how people are more ignorant as they learn. I am having a difficult time finding the connection between them, could you please elaborate more on that?
SZ: What I meant by that is I know sometimes when people focus on one single subject too much, they starts to pay less attention to other subjects around. I think every person has great flexibility of working in different fields. I do not think it is necessary to only focus on major, it might make someone loses his/ her direction when finding what he/ she truly want to do for life.
YL: Those are great points and now you make me re-think about my goal for life, but first let’s discuss more about the art project that you did in our studio class. I saw that you made a book out of vintage looking materials, and the pencil drawings in it do not have recognizable shapes, in other words, they are bit abstract. Can you further explain your art project?
SZ: I always believe that dreams are related to life and reality but I cannot tell how they relate to each other. So when I create these pieces, I combine my illogical dreams, as they were my memory fragments. They might have happened in my childhood or they might happen in the future. That is why I tear down all my drawings apart and make them look old and faded, in which to represent the unclearness of my own thoughts.
YL: I’m totally impressed by your ideas behind your work; I can tell how you express your thoughts by your work and I really like it. I feel like I get a much better understanding of you when we chat together like this and get to know you more. Thank you so much for your time.
