Repaint History
Repaint History Slides
(To know more about this project, please see the "Snow in September" show reflection.)
Repaint History - project concept
If you are a visual artist, particularly a painter, you may have the experience that you have to give up a part of the painting that you really love, for the sake of the overall design or concept of the painting. Once the part was covered by another layer of paint or materials, it only exists in the artist’s memories, with some regrets.
During the process of making the Snow in September series, from photorealism to abstract layering with brushstrokes and fabrics, I inevitably had to cover some parts of my paintings that I wish to see them again. I wish my painting had a “History” function, like the Photoshop software, that allowed me to save “snapshoots” for later while continuing the creative process. So, I took snapshots of the parts that I loved to keep as memories.
When displaying those documentary photographs in my studio, it struck me that they could be paintings on their own. I began to paint them by following the snapshot photos. The more I developed, a new version of paintings emerged from the originals. They looked similar yet different.
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To give those paintings new meanings, I titled them according to the music and audio books played in my studio, or what I saw on TV. I also titled those paintings based on the books I read during that time, for example: Norwegian Woods (Haruki Murakami), Quiet Flows the Don (Mikhail Sholokhov), Ferryman (Claire McFall), etc.
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That made me think: is it the same way for the development of our human history? Same historical event can be interpreted differently by time, geolocations, and peoples of power…
When discussing the Historical Discontinuity, Foucault commented that the flow of history and the fact that some "things are no longer perceived, described, expressed, characterized, classified, and known in the same way" from one era to the next.
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Many of my students are born after 9.11. They do not have the memories of this tragic event. Their knowledges about this human loss are based on other people’s reinterpretations and their own understandings, which could be partial, less factual, and even misleading. 9.11 was only 20 some years away. How many stories and the truth had sunk down the bottom of the river of our human history?
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By retelling the tragic stories, can we find solace, inspiration, beauty, and spirituality in our humanity?
To know more about this project, please see the "Snow in September" show reflection"