The people of Hong Kong pay much attention to their appearances. They use all means to make themselves more beautiful to an unhealthy state and neglect other qualities of life.
While the multitude spend all their times on their appearance let us take a good look on our bodies and their changes. When we re-examine our bodies, try to start with small points such as hair, finger/toe nails etc. to discover the changes of life, the way we put in our emotion. I don’t try to give an answer that differentiate according to each individual which can go back to the original quality – no matter a person is beautiful / ugly, fat / slim, tall / short, old / young etc. People live in different shapes that create multiple effects and multiple images.
An individual must tolerate a lot of things, not limited to the trend/stream of the multitude and to establish one’s independent significance and allow independent individuality to exist in the multitude.
Trivial in daily life, small things like fallen hairs, clipped finger / toe nails, folded bodies skins, taught us to review our bodies and more important, to re-examine our inner-selves and our true feelings.
A Private Art Code by Eva Kit-wah
Man I understand that it has been Sin Yuen’s desire, as an artist, to devote more time and creative space, to her art expressions. I am glad that she has fulfilled this recently.
She has given up her full-time teaching job and took up a part-time art education career in order to spend the majority of her energy and time in her art experiments. Watching her fervently introducing her recent art pieces, I see the original and familiar motifs are still there, but are maturing, showing her confidence and freedom.
Last year,2001, when I saw her exhibition piece, “Giddiness” in ‘Wo …Man : Feminine Art, excitement and gladness came to my mind. Attached to Twisted lines and brushstrokes, Sin Yuen refers to the motif of “Starting from grass” again . These expressionist lines are likes are twirls of weird brown and black brain-like organism, squirming in a corner of the room. One cannot help but think of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. That bug, transformed from a human being, hiding in a corner of the room, shocked by the fear of being discovered….Nightmares play an influential part of Sin Yuen’s work. Is it from the deepest impression from Dali or is it that is still lingering with her admiration of Klimt?
Sin Yuen’s work is encoded with secret marks. For instance, an earlier motif of a figure of feathers is now integrated with images as well as material of hair and nails.
Fingernail-like, crescent moon figures, drawn with acrylic and oil pastel on cushions ,dyed hairs, sometimes glued to cloth, sometimes mingled with silk, twirling into balls….Why those that are grown from the body then cut off? By putting them into artwork for peaceful memory or love?
Sin Yuen always likes fabric and cloth,(I was told these are the favourite materials used by feminine artists). She goes further using nylon, silk and cotton, tying them up in different shapes, then touching them up freely. At times sticking to it with lovely red beans, hinting private dreams in her warm bed. As with dreams, the well behaved audience is shy and goes back to the art work to admire its visual beauty, imagined touch, quality, and interesting material rather than dwell in someone else’s private world.
Looking at the lines of Sin Yuen, one thinks of the meticulously planned, bouncing, complicated and huge size brushstokes that reflect the author’s path of feeling in this world. But when I met her, Iwas attracted by her peaceful and wellcultured background. Sin Yuen’s personality has a sharp contrast between her out look and inner self. She puts vehement ideas into hideous signs but her behavior is well-constrained. Art style represents the person, the bottle could be new but the wine is better mature.
Sin Yuen likes to question chores of life, changing her queries into a private code through messages, signs, odd materials, colour, lines and volumes to create her unique visual effect. Reading her works is like watching a well-calculated and directed short play, without thinking whether the imagination in the play is more colourful and touching than reality.
• The author is Associate Professor of the Department of Religion and Philosophy, Baptist University of Hong Kong
• Translated by T.C.Sin
