6 P E O P L E
30/10/2020
When given this assignment, I immediately had a difficult time coming up with six people.
Perhaps it was because my definition of someone who mattered filtered out the majority of the people in my life. I defined “people who matter to me” as individuals whose impact on my life are significant to the level that I may not have gone down certain paths or made big life choices without their influence/input. With the standard set that high, I felt like very few would fit.
This made me think about my life carefully, analysing my present and recounting my past to see how it had led me to this point. Why did I choose animation? Why did I start drawing? Why did I stray away from more academic subjects when I wasn’t struggling with them to pursue art? Why am I different from who I was years ago?
The process of analysing the people around me became a process of outlining my identity and how I became the person I am today. Who were the people in my life and what were their influences?
In the end, I could only pin-point four people, though it felt right.
Sharing my work with the class had me rehearsing how I would explain my choices if I had to.
RM is a rapper and leader of the boyband BTS. He released a solo mixtape titled Mono in which he explored his feelings of solitude and the struggles of his life that I felt had put my most complicated thoughts into words. One of the songs, everythingoes, is about how nothing on earth lasts forever, including the hardships we’re currently facing. I see him as someone who created art that emphatized with me as well as offering consolation, hence the two different styles I drew him in.
My father was the one who first introduced me to art. When I was younger, I wasn’t performing well academically and didn’t have any hobbies. So he, who drew and painted a lot in his youth directed me towards that area. I’m thankful to him still for encouraging me to play musical instruments and draw, fully indulging into this creative area that I didn’t expect from him. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to find myself here if it weren’t for his influence. One drawing of him was drawn in 2014 when I was thirteen, sketching him candidly in his quiet time. The second drawing of him was drawn recently in 2020 six years later, now a full-fledged art student.
2014 2020
My grandfather is someone I vividly remember in my childhood and now, still. The love in my household is quiet, the affection present but minimal. I remember, however, as a child, how certain I was that my grandfather loved me because of how affectionate and outspoken he was about his love. I think the certainty has really helped me when it comes to reassessing myself and determining my value.
My mother is the first person to come to mind when I think resilience. A lot of things happened to me as a child and now, be it asthma, anxiety, broken front teeth, or scoliosis; none that anyone expected to happen. My mother had always remained calm as she adapted to the things that happen and would promptly educate herself on anything that she wasn’t familiar with. Her composure had calmed me in my most panicked times, and had trained my mindset to prioritize calmness when running into unexpected hurdles. I drew here in a distinct, middle-schooler style with coloured pencils on lined paper to capture that feeling of her always being there in my growing up.
6 O B J E C T S
6/11/2020
After figuring things out in the first assignment, picking out objects for this was much easier.
I used to have a difficult time cleaning my room as a child because I felt attached to different objects and would feel bad about throwing them away, thinking of different possible scenarios where I might need them in the future. I’ve always found it interesting that inanimate objects have sentimental values to us, and our emotional response to it almost matches that of people.
To express this, I decided to capture my objects as short stop-motion gifs, as though bringing them to life.
THE HAGRID ACRYLIC STAND was one of the rare impulse purchases that I made. I went to Osaka, Japan, with my older sister for my high school graduation trip and it was the first time I was travelling without my parents, and the entire trip was planned by me and my sister. I was careful about what to buy since the trip there was already hefty, but seeing a tiny cheap acrylic stand of Hagrid from Harry Potter amongst the rows of Japanese anime characters was so hilarious to me at that moment that I had to buy it for laughs. It ended up being one of the few souvenirs that I actually bought from Osaka.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis is the image of a milestone in my life when I managed to finish the entire book in English when I was seven years old. I was terrible at English when I was younger which greatly upset my father who grew up in London. It came to a point where he would sit down and read with me, something he didn’t do with any of my other siblings. I was given the complete Narnia chronicles and read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as I had seen the movie before. The book was the first of many that I later went on to read and enjoy.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller was my first purchase after moving to London for my foundation course. It was recommended to me by a friend when we were discussing Greek mythology and the writing made me cry. The normalization of same-sex love in the story gave me comfort and a break from the society where it is still viewed as an anomaly. Another fun memory from this was when my parents took me to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh when I was halfway through the book, not expecting to find a huge painting of Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus, spoiling the ending for me.
My first sketchbook was bought when I was ten and began to play around with copic markers, drawing fan art and making original characters. I had friends online and offline who had the same interests and made their own set of original characters, and we would draw each other’s characters for each other or making them interact. It was a time in my life, looking back, where I was at my happiest, fully enjoying art. Not saying that I despise art now, though back then I was struggling with my studies and art was an escape that I resorted to when I was down and stressed. Art now to me feels like everything and every emotion, not limited to just happiness.
The letter from my online friend was sent to me last year along with a handful of gifts and drawings. I’ve hand a lot of online friends in the past, but this is the first friendship to exceed years, so a letter from them is special to me. They knew I like Van Gogh, so the addition of writing their message on a Van Gogh postcard was a sweet personal touch that I appreciated.
My British passport was the only object in class that came with negative experiences. I felt that the significant parts of our identities don’t always have to be happy for them to be significant. Having dual-citizenship was something owed to my grandmother who, along with many pregnant women in her time, sneaked their pregnant bellies into flights to foreign countries to give birth there so their child would acquire the citizenship. My father is Thai but also British in many aspects. He grew up in London and studied medicine in Edinburgh. Though we rarely visit the UK, he knew the city like the back of his hand, walking around like a local who had always lived there. Even at home in Bangkok, he enjoys British shows and meals and music which I eventually inherited from him. Having a British passport came with the privilege of not needing a visa when travelling to countries that would require one if I only held a Thai passport. Having a British passport when I am also Thai, however, comes with the disenchantment and realisation that I am considered different because of how I look. I’d often get racially profiled when travelling to the UK, held back in border control due to an “oriental” face holding a British passport that looked like it had rarely been used or freshly made. I didn’t truly understand the reality of being a person of colour until that moment, and that part of my identity has been brought to the forefront of my mind.
C O N T E X T U A L R E S O U R C E S
In class, we were told the importance of keeping a collection of contextual research such as artists and works that we can access when needed. I have created a padlet that I will be regularly adding to as the course progresses.
The padlet for this can be found here
O B J E C T A R T I S T P R E S E N T A T I O N
13/11/2020
The object artist presentation was the first group assignment in the course. I’ve always felt obligated to speak up and give suggestions when discussions are quiet even though I am quite a reserved person for the sake of the project progressing.
I introduced to my group an artist I thought would fit the criteria which was the Czech film maker Jan Švankmajer, more specifically a section from his 1992 film Food. I had found the film last year during my foundation course, and was very glad that my group agreed to make the presentation about him.
There were instances where I was quite nervous about the presentation, as one of my peers didn’t have any social media accounts and could only communicate via another person. Fortunately, everything came together at the end and everyone worked on their parts of the presentation incredibly well. I couldn’t be more thankful that everyone turned up for the presentation.
The presentation can be found here.
The artists presented by other groups in class were all very interesting, notably Tanaka Tatsuya, Hans-Peter Feldmann, and Christopher Marley had caught my interest.
TANAKA TATSUYA created miniature worlds using everyday objects and food. I found the piece with the rice as clouds really interesting and made me think of my own culture and the food my family would make.
HANS-PETER FELDMANN photographed cross-sections of bread and exhibited them as such, showing a variety of different shapes textures. There was something comforting about this, I felt. Bread is a part of everyday life. Foods like rice and bread feel like the basis for any meal, and to exhibit framed photographs of them seem to show their significance to our lives, as subtle as they may be.
CHRISTOPHER MARLEY had a phobia of insects, but eventually went on to create artworks with the insects’ entire organisms preserved and arranging them in aesthetically pleasing well as if to ease that fear or to show how he had become fascinated by them. It made me think that the parts of our identities are not the be-all end-all of who we are. We are constantly changing and evolving as individuals, and what we know about ourselves now may not be the same for who we are in the past or the future. What we are so certain about now may be completely false after, much like how Marley had a phobia of bugs before going on to create beautiful artworks with them.