Baby Fish
For this project, my choice was to raise an onion.
I don’t know why we should write an artist statement, because I don’t think that I’m an artist. I’m just one of the liars. One is an artist, and he is born to be an artist. One is an art student, he won’t be an artist.
Yesterday, I went to the Whitney Museum with Lulu accidentally. On the sixth floor, there was a group of visitors, which had a interpreter as the leader. In a big room, the interpreter explained a large painting for visitors. It seemed that the interpreter had already said the same word for hundreds of times. But every one was looking at the painting with a stupid smile. I stood up and walked towards an installation work, which was a bottle and inside of it was a man looking toy. I was interested in that work and pointed it with out touching it to catch Lulu’s attention. Immediately, a woman employee came and let me don’t touch the art work.
“ I didn’t touch it.”
“ Don’t.”
If we are white, maybe the result won’t be the same. And the place I experienced this event is Whitney Museum, which is the place should be lenient, just like art.
Another thing is that when my friends are making their works, sometimes they just add something randomly in order to recreate them. But in the Museum, the time is just iced.
You can’t do the action, which is like you have motivation to touch an artwork. You can just stand on one hundred miles away from the artwork which you are interested in.
On the fifth floor, there was a really famous painting which I didn’t know the name of it. A man in a wheelchair was discussing this painting with his friends. Another man asked him that, what’s his opinion about two bottom corner. He said really carefully that he though they were beginning part of that painting.
My friend laughed.
“ Maybe they are over understand that painting.”
“ Yes. Or maybe we are uncivilized.” I replied.
For me, an uncivilized lair, I wanted to raise an onion for the fourth bridge. And her name is Baby Fish. After knowing that the location is Bowery and we should find an object’s changing in different decades, I thought of a lot. Eventually, several pics form the New York Public Library grabbed my eyes. They were pics about Bowery Chinatown. Like many Chinese students, I always put my most passion on exploring Chinatown. And then I searched more pics.
There were some photos of markets and groceries. And they reminded me about an article which I read when I was in high school. The idea of that article is that market is the most vivacious place. I found that although the time is going, the look of the market is still the same.
Especially old Chinese style market, which is humble and earthy. Vegetables, seafood and meat are put on a huge board without casing. It isn’t like the environment of the supermarket which is clean and ordered. People are talking loudly, they even shout out. You can bargain with the store owner. So, it made me feel touching. Different form some people in the museum and students in art school, people in a market are more real and dependable. Maybe after buying the ingredients, they will go to a museum. But it doesn’t interrupt the humble feeling which the Chinese market brings to me.
For me, I prefer humble people to hypocritical people.
So, I want to use an onion to represent this earthy feeling, and this feeling is stable, just like the invariance of the Chinese market in different decades. I raised an onion in a bottle with water, and before showing, I will freeze it in order to show the meaning, the unchangeable feeling.
This project not only gives me a chance to use unusual method to show my idea, but also enables me to explore a place that is like China but actually isn’t China. During this process, I found my own definition to “humble and earth” style. Maybe because of this city, people who are living in Chinatown live a unchangeable life. Different with the high speed development in China, Chinatown in NYC is like the China which is in thirty years ago. The differences and the similarities are interesting to be analyzed, and two points, same race and different life, seem to connect with each other. In the grocery stores in Chinatown, I can found pics of old China. And the feeling inside of these pics are pure. I can find the simplicity, which is the thing I’m chasing for.