Individual &Group
April 2021 | Individual Project
The inspiration for this project comes from a colloquialism that touches me deeply: sometimes it is a good thing to feel different from others, while sometimes it is more appropriate to act like others. I discovered that I am such a kind of person acting just like that. Many times, I am trying to be myself and do not care about what the other people and public are thinking about me. Nevertheless, sometimes, I follow the public unconsciously because that makes me feel safe or secure. Based on this inspiration, I created four items.
The first item that came to my mind is about the relationship between an individual and public criticisms. Most of the time, I do not like others to judge me and even think about hiding myself in a large group for the public to not see me. I also want to paste mirrors around my body, to try to tell the people who are commenting and pointing at me: just look at yourself.
In the second item, I want to express my thoughts when being in public places. In a large group of people, I do not want to be paid extra attention to and even think about escaping, so I can live in my own small world and enjoy doing whatever I like.
In the third item, I explore the meaning behind a phenomenon: success often leads people to crave more applause and attention. While praise can be motivating, it can also become a moral burden, overwhelming individuals and dragging them down. Inspired by Henri Matisse’s paper cuttings, I created a character who succumbs to public scrutiny—both positive and malicious—because of his inability to manage personal desires and the weight of others’ opinions.
In the last item, I would like to show the consequences which result from following the public trend blindly. In this fast-developed- technology society, intrinsic talents and advantages are becoming more and more important. It seems that too many people start exploring their potentials and become successful while some are eliminated due to lack of talents. Many people are unscrupulous in their efforts to keep up with the people having the so-called “super-power”. In the future, in order to keep up the pace with the highly competitive society, many of them are even willing to implant a large amount of hardware in their body to enhance them to obtain the “super-power” blindly. Therefore, I assembled a human being with many old circuit boards and abandoned electric wires I collected.