Where Did The Souls Go?
2021
Main Idea The inspiration for the series came from two pieces of my project, 100 creative pieces in 100 days, created in the year 2020. I extended the idea of the Demon’s Restaurant that I created in my project. In 2021, I was also inspired by a Japanese artist, Shiota Chiharu ( 塩 田 千 春 ). Through her interpretation of the soul, she explored the appearances of the soul through videos, red lines, and interviews. Her exhibition aroused my curiosity about the journey of souls. Many people are seeking the meanings of their life, and I think that the meanings are connected to the soul. The soul is invisible and intangible, so I am curious about how it looks like and where it would go. Soul is also an animation film produced by PIXAR which discusses a lot of the meaning of the soul. I was deeply touched by one of the lines in the movie that goes “the meaning of soul is just a passion for living”.
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I suppose most of the souls either go to heaven or hell after escaping from their bodies, but I also believe that some souls go to different places. Some may get lost somewhere or stay among the humans. To explore their journey, I created three paintings, imagining where the souls could go.
The initial ideas, from 100 creative pieces in 100 days.
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The Blue Moon Acrylic on canvas 53 X 45.5 cm
Story ‘Blue Moon’, a restaurant in the human world, is owned by a demon. Blue Moon is also the favourite song of the owner of the restaurant. In addition, the full moon is usually seen once a month, but every two to three years, there will be a month in which the full moon will be seen twice. The second full moon seen in the month is called the blue moon. This restaurant belongs in neither heaven nor hell, but the human world. This demon is a restaurant owner with principles: he only serves delicious and sinful souls in the restaurant for non-human creatures, such as angels, demons or mysterious creatures. Just like smoking or drinking for humans, these creatures don’t live on human souls, but rather for the pleasure of consuming the sin in those souls.
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The Praire Laboratory Acrylic on canvas 60.5 X 45 cm
Story The food ingredients (souls) in the restaurant are provided by a mysterious doctor who is also a demon. The doctor owns a laboratory with a natural environment and is interested in raising fantastic creatures. The doctor steals souls from the human world and conducts experiments by extracting the souls from human in the laborator y and providing them to the restaurant.
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Exploration in Mind
Acrylic on canvas, Luminous media 40 X 40 cm
Story ‘Blue Moon’ is about to open, thus the restaurant is in desperate need of waiters. The owner of the restaurant finds a lost little human girl, who is trying to explore her own soul in her mind. So the demon invites the girl to work at the restaurant and promises to help her find her soul. In order to emphasise the bizarre effect of messages that the demon delivers from another space to the girl, I used luminous media in the work, so that the girl in this paintings can find her way even in the darkness.
The effect of luminous media in the dark.
Mix - The Shape of the Soul
2021
Main Idea When I was a child, I used to own a cat. He was wary of humans at first but slowly became friendly as he accepted our food and a nice snuggle box in cold winter. He loved wandering off by himself during the day. One morning, he left the house as usual but never came home since then. His death broke my heart and I could not believe the fact that he was gone for good. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder what death means. Is death the end or a transformation into another stage of consciousness? I believe that his soul still exists after his body faded away. His existence only transferred into another form, a form that is intrinsically unfamiliar to us. Therefore, I looked for this new form of life, which is the shape of the soul. I created a skeleton as a container of the soul, which was inspired by the cat’s spine. The middle of the skeleton is filled with several scattered pieces. This three-dimensional work depicts the moment of death, when a soul escapes the body when death occurs and tries to define its own shape.
Draft
Mix 27 X 26 X 30 cm
Tissue papper, Wire, Gel medium, Tights
The soul is often considered intangible and elusive, so I used some thinner materials to represent the shape of the soul. It is shaped to be spreading out piece by piece, depicting the moment when the soul was disturbed during the process of shape-shifting.
The Fixed Points of Timeline
2020
Main Idea After watching a sci-fi TV series, Doctor Who, I was deeply obsessed with the idea of time travel. Somehow, I was upset at the same time, since in reality, we can’t travel through time to explore the universe as the characters did. Although Albert Einstein predicted that time travel could be practised in the future, currently, it is still impossible. Given my perception of time, we are trapped in a fixed point of time and space at the moment. The future is based on forecasting, while the past can only be reminisced. Through this series, I would like to convey the feeling of the inability to escape from the timeline.
My idea tree.
1 ‘Time’ is a continuous sequence of the motion of an object; and ‘space’ is an abstract concept that signifies the position, shape and direction of the motion of an object. Hence, I believe that time and space are inseparable. To extend my understanding of time, I associated it with the universe. I suppose time is composed of many fixed events; when considering each event to be a point, time is composed of the sequence of the points, connecting as a line. Due to the limitation of technology, we can only follow the concept of time and cannot travel back and forth along the timeline like what happens in scifi works. It makes me feel helpless and upset, so I would like to explore my feeling and the sense of incompetence as a human being limited by time through this series.
Slide
Gel pen 39.3 X 27.2 cm
Story
My inspiration comes from the idea tape records the audio. When the plas it is similar to the traces of time. Hen to represent the incapability and vulne and space. Furthermore, those fluctu direction of time in space.
of ‘rewind’ and ‘cassette tape’. A cassette stic film of tapes is pulled out of the case, nce, I cut the spacesuit with a cassette tape erability of humans when dealing with time uating lines in the background imply the
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The Lapse
Acrylic on canvas 53 X 41 cm
Story In this painting, I extended the idea of cassette tapes. I imagined that the cassette tapes carry people’s thoughts and memories, and they are stored in the spacesuit floating in the universe. However, as time passes, the shell melts and shatters, and the tapes inside would eventually fall out of the container. The process feels like a fusion of spirit and time.
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Rusty Nails Acrylic on canvas 65 X 53 cm
Story To me, the feeling of incapability of reversing time feels like wandering aimlessly in the universe or sinking deep in the water. I created an aquarium with a reversed perspective of humans and fish, in contrast to reality, for the astronaut was being observed. I imagined that I floated comfortably on the surface of the water, but all of a sudden I sunk deeply into the bottom and gave up struggling.
My Interpretation of Drama Digital painting
2020
Doctor Who inspired me deeply. In the final episode of the 10th Doctor, although he was born in an environment surrounded by love, he became the loneliest person in the universe because of losing all his companions. Therefore, I want to record the feeling of this moment. I chose to use warm colours on the TARDIS (the police box) and cool colours in the space to emphasise the contrast.
After I finished watching Good Omens, a story about an angel and a demon working together to save the world, I visualised my interpretation of the characters. In the original story, the angel and the demon have been friends for 6,000 years and working together to stop the apocalypse, but I imagined another scenario where they did not save the world. Instead, they have to fight for their own sides, heaven or hell, which could have happened if they couldn’t be friends anymore.
When I felt anxious and stressed, I relieved my stress by watching the series and reflecting on the scenes in the drama. For instance, scenes in which the characters were helpless with their lives under control or felt anxious about the situations they were dealing with. I reincarnated these scenes into figurative forms and I feel my soul comforted.
Life in The Steam City
2021
Main Idea Economic inequality exists in every society and the cause of inequality usually relates to the distribution of resources and wealth between the classes. Upperclass people have money and power and live a life of domination and luxury. However, most people believe that by overturning the governor or the upper class, inequality between the classes will end accordingly. However, it usually turns out that only the people who were in charge were replaced, but inequality and rivalry between classes still remain.
old technology and the harsh life of people in the lower classes. Steampunk is a fictional genre where futuristic and retro styles meet.
I chose different animals as a metaphor for human society. In my work, the fat cat presents an image of a cunning, lazy, egoistic and maybe a little bit corrupted character. Based on this perspective, I made cats the rulers of the world, while other animals are submissive to the cats. Unlike the real world, animals account for the majority of the lifeform of this world, whereas a human child survives as one of the minorities.
References
Steampunk, a science fictional world, is a background that matches my vision and aesthetics. Steampunk is full of retrofuturistic inventions, industrial elements and capitalism. The world also reflects the technological and economic development that people in the 19th century envisioned. On the other hand, Steampunk depicts the
The blending and lines of the ink are rhythmic and dynamic. The contrast between black and white is an ideal expression for industrial aesthetics. In addition, I hope more extensions of the work can be created in the future based on the series.
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The Factory
Ink, Digital colouring 54.5 X 39.3 cm
Story The cat boss owns a lot of giant factories, which produce fancy and expensive cupcakes f o r u p p e r- c l a s s c a t s . H e exploited the dogs to make cupcakes with low salary while earning a huge profit. Today, the cat boss arrives at one of his factories to monitor the production line. However, the production line turns out to be a mess and a human kid sneaks into the factory to steal a cupcake.
Draft
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The Greenhouse Ink, Digital colouring 39.3 X 54.5 cm
Story In an early morning, a child hid for a long time and finally found a chance to escape from the greenhouse after the catnip party. He thought that hiding among the plants was a great idea, but he didn’t expect a crazy party going on. Therefore, he had to wait until all the upper-class cats fell asleep to leave quietly and secretly.
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The Street
Ink, Digital colouring 39.3 X 54.5 cm
Story Rainy and gloomy days are normal in this metallic city. Those noble upper-class cats enjoy going out in this weather because they can drive their luxurious flying vehicles above the streets to show off their new technology and wealth, but it seems that nobody cares about their fancy vehicles.
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The Restaurant Ink, Digital colouring 54.5 X 39.3 cm
Story The restaurant, a place for them to enjoy parties and delicacies, is one of the cats’ favourite places to go. One day, a cat walks into the noisy restaurant and announces that a large reward will be offered for the capture of the cupcake thief.
Personal Statement I enjoy drawing and I see it as an intuitive way for me to express ideas and feelings. I am dedicated to making my work expressive and visually fascinating through colours and lines. In 2016, I was admitted to the Department of Information and Communications at the Chinese Culture University to pursue my passion for art and design. In my junior year, my partner and I made an e-book to introduce culture parks in Taipei in a non-traditional way. I created digital illustrations and added interactive elements to enhance the reading experience. The project has led me to delve into digital painting and it makes me believe that illustration can be a powerful solution to many problems in our lives.
I have also gained teamwork and time management skills by working with teammates to create a 3D shooter game for graduation production show. It was a challenging yet fulfilling experience. I particularly enjoyed working with people and learned how to communicate with them. After I graduated from university, it took me some time to explore my career focus. Meanwhile, I started to produce my comics, illustration books and some merchandise. I enjoy the process of turning my ideas into images and delivering them to someone’s hands. This experience had a great impact on me and was the deciding factor that have led to me pursuing a career in illustration. In the future, my goal is to become a professional illustrator and establish my own brand. To fulfil the dream, I need to broaden my horizons and gain more advanced knowledge. I realize that studying at an intellectual environment and learning with experts are of great significance to me. I firmly believe your programme will help me develop the expertise necessary for my future career.