Bridge 3 – Materials and Content Diptych Investigation

Top: This piece is more abstract than the bottom diptych. The left side is a representation of New York City, something that I view as precise, linear, and in a way, mathematical. It is mostly composed of text, inspired by the New York City subway. On the right is a digital collage of buildings that my family and I would frequent in Orange County, California. Southern California has a very complacently-decentralized way of life. To me, this felt unorganized and a bit chaotic. The right side of the diptych is my way of showing that.

Bottom: The bottom diptych was created as a response to my dual-identity. I think this one is the more successful of the two. Basically, I featured two dishes that my mom made for me growing up: one called Bún bò Huế and spaghetti and meatballs. Both remind me fondly of my childhood. Playing with the dimensions of a diptych, I used the two flags that represent my identity. The one on the right is obviously the American flag; the one on the left is lesser known flag of South Vietnam, the one that was used right before North Vietnam claimed victory and merged the two countries. Traditionally, Bún bò Huế is generally eaten with chopsticks in Vietnam and spaghetti and meatball is eaten with a fork. I switched the two to further bring a general sense of balance and contrast in this piece.

Post-critique:

What I heard in critique was that these diptychs were successful in their own right, but could’ve used different materials/medium to further their point. For example, someone suggested that for the flags piece, I should have used real fabric in order to make it truly three dimensional. For the American flag one, I could cut out the fabric and used real chopsticks (perhaps painted yellow) in order to make the piece more interactive.

It was helpful because I generally work in digitally spaces and mediums. Thinking outside the box can be more difficult for me because I am not a particularly fine artist but after the crit, I am work aware of physical and tangible work/concepts that I could apply to my own investigations.

Going forward I’m going to try to include some sort of physical layer/element to my diptychs.

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