Brainstorm:
Development:
Final Piece:
The piece I created looks into the sense of touch. It is based on the feeling of being in a Hong Kong MTR station during rush hour, when the station is crowded with office workers, students and more. The intertwined hands represent the way people are pushed together and get tangled with one another, and the hands are depicted to be bent in odd ways to invoke a grimy, uncomfortable feeling in the readers to help them experience what its like for MTR passengers to be in that position. Initially, my idea was to cover the entire page with these skin tones, however, while creating the piece, I realised the spaces in between helped establish the idea of people grappling for what little space is left around them, and therefore chose to leaves these gaps blank in the painting. On top of this acrylic painting, I have layered PVA glue and grains of salt to create a glossy effect (which unfortunately didn’t work out as well as I had hoped) and convey the sweaty, humid atmosphere in the station – much like most New York subway passengers have experienced. An extra layer I have added on top is the embroidery on some of the hands, which roughly corresponds to the shape of the lines on the MTR map. Thread is known to be a material that often gets tangled, and therefore helps to emphasise the feeling of being intertwined with other MTR passengers.
