Proposal

When I was little, I have heard of stories been told by my mother and grandmother about me, themselves, and their parents. I still remember some of them, and else I have forgot. Some of the stories were being told again and again, and with the languages I create a image inside my mind and that image sometimes become too real to forget. Even I have never really seen those people, or places, I have created them as scenes and images and stored them inside my brain. They twisted my memories, but I am not mad, because they made my childhood more vivid, and those imaginations to me was precious. When these semi-false memory segments flashes into my mind, and I want to create an image series to really visualize the stories. I can’t even tell if they really happened, or were stories being told by the grownups, or even the stories that I have made up in my mind and now assumes they are told by the others. I will try to search for these fragments, and make a drawing of collages from different sources, such as the old photographs, images online, or even my own drawings.

Project Images

Image 1:

My Grandfather in the 60s

I haven’t seen my grandfather for a long while. He lives in the rural hometown whereas I lived in Shenzhen at the age of six years old, the great city in the southern part of China. My grandmother visited my family, and told me stories about my grandfather. Both my mother and my grandmother had told me the story about the era of People’s Commune. However, that social system clearly failed because my mother and her siblings were almost starving to death. With no other choice, my grandfather woke up 3 in the morning to steal the sweet potatoes from the farmland, which were illegal because all land was owned by the the People’s Commune at the time. Suddenly I created such imagery of my grandfather in mind: an old man in gray Mao suit and trousers with a flat cap. He(or his image that I imagined) looked so familiar to me at the time, and I realized he looked like Van Gogh to me, who was the only artist I knew at that age. So that self-portrait image of Van Gogh become image source of the “first-impression” of me imagining my grandfather. It is confusing, and I am also confused by this. If I did not repeat this story to my grandfather few years after I met him, and finally remember what he really looked like, I would still recognize that imagery as a real impression of my grandfather. However, at the present moment, I could not even remember what that image looked like when I was six, or if the image that is inside my 23 years-old brain is also twisted by the later on impression of my grandfather’s appearance. All I that I can do right now is to credit this image as the first impression of seeing my grandfather.

Image 2:

Me at the Tiananmen Square Massacre 1982

In the summer of 1982, my mother was still a college student studying in Zhengzhou University. When she knew she gets a free train ticket to go to Being in order to join the student movement at Tiananmen, she was excited by the idea of student activism. She when to Beijing, and witnessed the students protest in front of the Tiananmen Square. What she never knew is that few days after her return to Zhengzhou, the activist protesters, primarily composed by college students and teachers, were brutally shut down by the government. This happened before I was born, even before the time when my mother had met my father. Surprisingly, this memory is totally erased in my generation. I had no access to what happened in that summer, expect the story that was told by my mother repeatedly in the 4th days of June every year. My visual imagery selection is from the Army Day emblem (the day of celebrating the People’s Liberation Army.) But on June 4th 1982, the Army fired the weapons toward the people. I always have this image inside my mind, which I don’t want to let it go.

Image 3:

Grandpa Deng 2004

Anyone who enters the Shenzhen city will see this gigantic mural of Xiaoping Deng, the second Chairmen of People’s Republic of China. He is also the father of Shenzhen because it was his decision to open free market there. Shenzhen now has grown into a metropolitan city and has provided millions of Chinese chances and opportunities; my parent were one of them. My parent were born in rural villages, but after they went to the universities, they decided to pursue their dreams in Shenzhen, which they did. I remember every time sitting in my fathers car and passing by his mural, his smile to me is always kind and amiable. I also liked to fly kite at the park nearby. Shenzhen to me is my hometown, I had lovely childhood experiences there, and I was happy. If it were not Xiaoping Deng, China would still be very under developed, and I will never have the opportunities as I get at this moment. I appreciated his contribution indeed, and in schools we used to call him dearly as “Grandpa Deng.” But as I grown up, I realized that it was also Deng has commanded for the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Therefore, I made this image to juxtapose my feeling toward this leader, and visualizing my childhood memories.