Slow Burn Statement of Intent by linaw

Slow Burn

Slow Burn by Lina Wu A Statement of Intent & Process Journal for Shea Chang’s Illustration Thesis class (ILLU-4901-006), OCAD U October 15, 2020 This project was planned and executed on land that is territory of the Huron-Wendat, Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Missisaugas of the Credit First Nations, and the Métis Nation. The land around the Great Lakes is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This land, encompassing the cities of Toronto, Etobicoke, North York, York, and Vaughan, was illegitimately acquired by the Crown under the Toronto Purchase Treaty No. 13 in 1805. Its legitimacy was formally challenged by the Missisaugas of the Credit in 1998, who filed a claim against the Government of Canada and was finally settled in 2010. I was born on this territory; I am a second-generation immigrant. My parents were born in China before eventually settling here in Toronto. I am grateful to work on this land and, as such, bear a responsibility to actively interrogate and dismantle the colonial structures that continue to do violence to Indigenous and marginalized communities across Tkaronto and Turtle Island. As I work through this project I am thinking about how we can depict spatiality and land in a way that is informed by the history and nature; as living, reactive, transformative, and— at times— hostile. I am also considering how we can illustrate forms of violence and violenced bodies in relation to these spaces, and what stories our bodies can tell. To have the resources and opportunity to explore and work through these choices is not a privilege I take for granted.

Table of Contents Project Description Pitch, concept details

Illustration Ideas Text descriptions, thumbnails

Rationale Target audience, Application & relevance, Further opportunities, Precedents

Past Work Examples Inspiration Board

20 21

Methodology Conceptual, Technical, Research & reference, Learning objectives

Timeline

Final Work Bibilography

TBC 26

Project Description Pitch: Slow Burn upturns the notion of love as safe haven by illuminating the volatility and destructive power of intimacy in unsettling mythological tableaux.

In her essay Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson uses translation and interpretation of classical texts to inform the characterization of eros as ambivalent, or, using Sappho’s original word, glukupikron— “sweetbitter” (18). A good example of this is Carson’s translation of Catullus’ epigram: “I hate and I love. Why? you might ask. / I don’t know. But I feel it happening and I hurt” (23). She traces the opposing tastes, sensations and emotions these writers use to describe love, which often times seem contain contradictions within themselves. She translates Anakreon’s poem like so:

Eros, the ancient Greek concept of love most analogous to the present-day concept of romantic and sexual love, has figured into social conception as lifelong partnership; a lighthouse in the dark storm of life: warm, constant, and capable of responsible guidance into a fulsome and successful existence. However, Plato’s Symposium describes Eros as “daemon”; an intermediate between the divine and the mortal. This text recognized the immense power (and, consequently, danger) present in passionate love. Slow Burn aims to draw upon the otherworldly force of Eros to demonstrate the harrowing complications of being subjected to, or subject of, desire.

With his huge hammer again Eros knocked me like a blacksmith and doused me in a wintry ditch (Carson 23). 2

This reminds me of Michael Ondaatje’s poem “The Goodnight”, one of the two poems he made about Philoctetes: “Imagine his hands — black / from the dried blood of animals, / a bow of torn silver / that noised arrows loose like a wild heart” (17). The beating of the heart as love and vitality is, again, married with violence.

the same” (13). The rupture of harrowing disaster has the ability to wrench us from our narcissistic melancholia. But this is not a pain-free maneuver. Indeed, even outside of volatile emotional landscapes, complicated social controls have been manufactured in an effort to create, control, surveil, and police our most personal desires. Our most intimate moments and feelings are rife for self-contradiction.

The very etymology of Eros is situated within this paradox— a want for something that is fundamentally lacking (Carson 27). Eros is yearning for what we do not have; a love that is pointed upwards from below.

Slow Burn recognizes how love destroys the insulation of our own worlds (i.e. our ego), and forces us to reckon with the mortifying tensions of devotion to a fundamentally differing Other. In creating intimate moments within a world that operates on the (il)logic of desire, and using the visual language of pre-existing and fabricated mythologies, the scenes that comprise this project bear witness to what it means to exist in the lover/beloved dynamic and the complications therein.

In her song “Nobody”, Mitski sings: “Venus, planet of love / was destroyed by global warming / did its people want too much, too?” Indeed, “Wanting too much” can lead to dire consequences. In The Agony of Eros, ByungChul Han describes the arrival of the Other (the beloved) as an apocalypse that can rescue us from “the inferno of 3

Illustration Ideas 1. Marriage

tration re-imagining Philoctetes, Paris and Helen, with Philoctetes in love with Paris. It flows horizontally across a landscape composition, and is visually tied together by the greenery (loosely based on the island of Lemnos) and a butterfly motif. The first section of the illustration is Philoctetes hidden in an oak tree, distraught face barely visible in the shrubbery, about to shoot Paris with his fourth and last arrow. The second section is Paris, haloed by the sun, separating tall grass, reaching for the third section of the illustration; where Helen is sitting at a dark pond. Helen is shrouded in darkness, turned away from the viewer and her face in the reflection is covered by a butterfly and seems disinterested in what is occurring behind her. This illustration explores unrequited love through this dynamic; Philoctetes tormented and exiled for his love for Paris, and Paris unable to win Helen’s affection, and Helen who is unhappy and not present because she cannot be seen as more than a beautiful object.

Social expectations and baggage from state-sanctioned institutions that enforce monogamy, patriarchy, cisheterosexuality. This illustration criticizes such institutions and the expectations they enforce by making the wedding dress a burden to carry, too heavy and pooling at the feet, whiting out other signs of life between the folds of fabric. The dress becomes a sheet of ice, freezing flowers, plants, animal parts (implying inhospitability and a play on “cold feet”). The skirt resembles the petals of a frost-damaged blossom. It also impedes the free mobility of the bride who is sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs, perhaps referencing a chapel or Plato’s ladder of love.

2. Unrequited Being in love with someone who does not reciprocate your feelings (what then)? This is an elaborate illus4

3. Loss

window. This illustration summates the “bittersweet,” the visualization of hot/cold tension. (Sometimes being apart is the healthiest way to care for somebody).

Loving someone but not being able to be together; for reasons ranging from physical distance to mental health. This is another larger, more detailed illustration, re-imagining the Chinese legend of Hou Yi the archer and Chang’e the moon goddess in a vertical composition (recalling the scroll form). A woman is being pulled up through a window frame towards a large moon. Her hair covers her face, giving it a blank expression, if discernible. Her house slippers have fallen loose from her feet. She is obstructing a man’s vision. He seems distraught and is trying to pull the woman back down. His skin is emanating licks of flame; he is sitting on a pile of suns, which are stacked on top of each other like stingray carcasses or very large egg yolks. They each have an arrow pierced through them. The viewer’s eye travels vertically through the image from the visual line of the figures, the arrows, smoke from the suns, and the curtain from the

4. Repression The codification of language and discourse around Eros, referencing Foucault’s speaker’s benefit and his theory of love and sexuality, which traces this state control of discourse back to the pastoral confessional. One solemn eye peeks through the elaborately patterned, veiled window of a confession booth. The eye is sculpturally rendered whereas the window is more colourful, graphic and linework-heavy, creating an intricately obstructed view of the confessor’ face.

5. Dissociation

7. Imposition

Retreating into yourself, distancing yourself for fear of closeness. Someone having an out-of-body experience, pressed on their bedroom ceiling, as their own shadow is casted onto them. They are having an intimate moment with somebody else but they cannot be fully present.

Forcing a relationship, or clinging onto one, for fear of feeling a void. Someone is holding onto a swan boat approaching the opening of a marshy drainwater culvert; a hand emerges from the water, trying to hold it back and weigh it own. It is sinking the small boat. The classic image of the “tunnel of love” carnival ride is synthesized with a darker environment, to give a feeling of hopelessness and desperation.

6. Misapprehensions Romanticizing unhealthy dependency models. Somebody is reading a beat-up library copy of a manga volume, so engrossed that their face isn’t visible, their hair covers their face and body, and they are wrapped up in a blanket. The cover of the manga, the focal point, shows two faces holding each other, exchanging tears. Their eyes are large as oceans and their hair is so pointed they might be hurting each other.

8. Naiveté Not foreseeing the potential challenges that come with intimacy. Two figures are kissing, one of them has just dropped a half-eaten apple on the ground behind her. From the apple sprouts a twisted, complicated, and menacing tree. It looms over the couple and covers both their heads (the kiss itself is not actually visible). 10

9. Ambivalence

11. Obsession

Love and hatred can coexist; in fact, they are often intertwined. Two rugby players are breaking out into fisticuffs in a huge, idyllic rose bush. The exchange of blood between them functions as intimacy.

What differentiates deep love with an unhealthy obsession? What do our patterns of obsession reveal about ourselves? If I decide to create this illustration, I want to depict the feeling of ruminating about something and not being able to stop. For example, someone struggling to escape a web of hair, to show the entanglement of someone else in your emotional landscape. This tension between closeness and the desire to struggle away.

10. Agency Imbalances in power can complicated the dynamics of control and agency in relationships. Two horses with horseriders; one of them is a white unicorn with a figure in a knight costume and the other has fallen off and is

12. Narcissism Using somebody else to soothe your own ego. If I deicde to create this illustration, I want to do some kind of otherworldly spin on Caravaggio’s Narcissus.

being dragged around by her horse (à la Sarah Churchill in The Favorite). The unicorn is trying to help the fallen rider up, but her horse is trying to run away.

10.

Rationale Target audience

Application & relevance

I am creating these images for older teens and adults. These are the time periods in our life when we begin to think more critically about what we want from our relationships and how they can radically shift our lives. (It’s a prime age category for dating and, consequently, getting your heart broken/falling in love, so the topic of this project will be relatable to them.)

I would be interested in showing versions of this work in a fine arts setting, both in a gallery context and/or in an collected publication (I will explore analogue media in this project and want to retain control of the tactility of the surface). I hope these images will be relevant as we learn how to configure our relationships, especially in this new global context. I want them to be relatable and not too esoteric.

Further opportunities

Precedents

If I make original pieces would be interested in displaying them in a gallery setting. Galleries that show the work of emerging artists include those affiliated with OCAD (Xpace Cultural Centre, Ignite). More recently, new artist-run spaces such as Hearth and the plumb would also be appropriate (I would eventually be interested in approaching an illustrator-friendly gallery like Patel Brown for collaboration or representation). Otherwise I would be interested in making artists’ multiples or prints or a publication of the work, to sell at a gallery store or at a zine fair (TCAF, Zine Dream, Art Metropole, etc). I think the series would work really nicely in print reproduction of some kind.

Love/Eros is a topic that’s old as time, with extensive artwork and research on the subject. Here are a couple of bodies of work that I have been looking at because I like how they build a world to create an emotional landscape, and bring their own fiercely individual voice as well. • Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (album by Perfume Genius): This record is a great example of work that is heavily connected to the body and the figure. Perfume Genius often delves into gender expression, love, devotion, and recovery in his work. • Witness My Shame (art book collection by Shary Boyle): The collected book work of Shary Boyle illustrates disturbing and touching vignettes of guilt and shame. She does not shy away from the strange and personal. 19

Past work examples

Inspiration Board

Yoshitaka Amano Hernan Bas Caroline Polachek Pang Angel Olsen Jamiyla Lowe Dave McKean Mel Odom Arina Tanemura Margot Ferrick Competitive figure skating FKA Twigs MAGDALENE Ai Yazawa Paradise Kiss Jeremy Sorese Justin Mortimer Ballroom arts Ocean Vuong Night Sky With Exit Wounds Erica Eyres Sasha Gordon Hirohiko Araki Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Eli Howey Kelela

Kunihiko Ikuhara Revolutionary Girl Utena Charles Burns Black Hole Kyle Staver Joanna Newsom Ren Hang Naoko Takeuchi Sailor Moon William Blake Perfume Genius Set My Heart on Fire Immediately Shary Boyle Witness My Shame Danica Lundy Hao Nguyen Fiona Apple Shunga artists Vivian Fu Andrew Wyeth Blood Orange Cupid Deluxe Suzan Pitt Joy Street Quim magazine & other LGBTQ magazines 21

Methodology Conceptual

Technical

My interest in this topic and approach originated from personal experience and was influenced by a combination of writing about love and sexuality (a diverse influence board includes the work of Anne Carson, Michel Foucault, Amia Srinivasan, Plato, and other poets and feminist theorists). Currently I’m interested in figurative work, and how selective obstructions/obfuscations of the figure and portrait can function to create ambiguity and space for the viewer to project themselves onto the image.

The heart of this project will be centered around varied uses of pencil linework and analogue media. I plan to experiment with different media to apply tone and coloration that can be stitched into a final digital composite image. I am also seeking a strong tonal voice to run through these pieces and for areas of form to be described by light and shadow. The way light falls over forms will function as a key conceptual tool.

Research & reference

Learning objectives

I am doing continuous visual research throughout this project by succumbing to “internet rat” habits and downloading images of figures, objects, locations, and historical artistic renditions to use as reference (Google, Twitter, Tumblr, but most of all, older photographs from Archive.org). I am also referencing text-based sources in tandem, mainly the source texts mentioned in my description and also ancient mythologies for select illustrations.

The biggest challenge will be for me to develop a more reliable working process through a cohesive body of work in a tight time frame. This means allowing myself enough time at the beginning of an illustration to make sure I understand the tonal composition (a step I have often foregone in the past). Then, I will be free to play and experiment with media, colour, and linework. I’m also aiming to be more honest with myself about when I have the capacity to do work and when I’m better off stepping away to write or research. A more reliable process will also help with a consistency of style. I will also be learning how to synthesize research and influences into an original narrative, document my work and process appropriately, and refine my image-making decisions.

Timeline I developed this timetable to allow myself as much time as possible to work on the final surface, because this is where my work is most intensive and time-consuming. This timeline will be changed and adapted as my working process is developed throughout the semester.

Fall •

• •

•

Week 1: Pitches with topic and framework, illustration descriptions, sketches and samples of previous work are submitted for review. Week 2: Feedback is received a pitch is chosen to develop and revise. Week 3: Refining and specifying illustration imagery through visual and textual research; finishing first draft of statement of intent package. Week 4: Rough sketches showing specificity of symbolism, framing and imagery for all 10 illustrations finalized. (There will still be room to adjust upon creation of final images, but a detailed and workable visual plan for each illustration must be present).

• • • • • • •

•

Week 5: Statement of intent package is submitted. Sketches further developed. Week 6: Break Week 7: Finish linework on final surface for illustrations 1 and 2. Week 8: Finish media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 1 and 2. Week 9: Finals submitted for illustrations 1 and 2. Week 10: Finish linework on final surface for illustrations 3 and 4. Week 11: Finish media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 3 and 4. Week 12: Finals submitted for illustrations 3 and 4,

processing feedback from critique.

Winter • • • • • • • •

Week 1: Finish linework on final surface for illustra-

•

tions 5 and 6. Week 2: Start media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 5 and 6. Week 3: Finish media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 5 and 6. Week 4: Finals submitted for illustrations 5 and 6. Week 5: Finish linework on final surface for illustrations 7 and 8. Week 6: Finish media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 7 and 8. Week 7: Break Week 8: Finals submitted for illustrations 7 and 8.

• • •

Week 9: Finish linework on final surface for illustrations 9 and 10. Week 10: Processing and applying feedback from critique. Week 11: Finish media tests (and revised linework if applicable) for illustrations 9 and 10. Week 12: Finals submitted for illustrations 9 and 10.

Bibliography Carson, Anne. Eros the Bittersweet. Princeton University Press, 1986. Han, Byung-Chul. The Agony of Eros. The MIT Press, 2017. Mitski. “Nobody”. Be the Cowboy. Dead Oceans, 2018. Ondaatje, Michael. “The Goodnight.” The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems. Vintage Books, 1997.