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Beauty and the Beast
2013
BY
WEN Hsin
Beauty and the Beast
2013
videos , printed-picture
Beauty and the Beast
2013
videos , printed-picture
Beauty and the Beast
2013
videos , printed-picture
01 / 10

I had my breast removed in my junior year in college. It was a great shock for a girl at my age to deal with such a physical challenge. I had to take a break from my artistic practice for a long while. However, while I stayed in the hospital, I started to feel that I was living in a vacuum, and the silence of normalcy allowed me to hear myself, to pacify my heart, and to recover slowly. A desire for rebirth came to me at that time, and I was ready for it. Although it was followed by more challenges, I started to examine my body in a different way. In my artistic disguise, I was healed and empowered. Now I see myself differently and my life has a new beginning.
At first, it was painful to look into the mirror. No matter how hard I forced myself to be optimistic about my breast removal, I still thought of myself as incomplete. The person in the mirror was like a fearful monster. I did not know the monster, but the monster was me. EVEN with clothes, the ugliness never went away. I could feel that people’s gaze penetrated my transparent body.

Since I could not escape from my own body, I had to make up a personality. It was not real, but it was between reality and memory. It was my idea of “disguise.”
It is how Beauty and the Beast was created: through the image of “hand,” the imitative gestures are internalized as life. It is human instinct which we have been practicing since we were born that we learn what we look like through imitation. In imitation, we find protection and satisfaction. In the work, I keep changing and repeating trendy gestures, trying to fake some easiness in front of the camera by proclaiming that “I am normal, and there is nothing wrong about me” with the least special language. Meanwhile, I continue caressing the wounded body, as if my comfort can reach the depth of my heart through the scars. I keep doing that, until I am wrapped up in care and comfort like a chrysalis. Eventually, I feel like I am also metamorphosed from my monstrous being into a beautiful creature. In the space created by myself, I am waiting for my own rebirth.

ARTISTS
3 artworks / 9 exhibition
Video Art
As long as I can remember, I`ve always attempted presenting the symbol of body through the print media and pursuing the very first feeling or perception of a “body of system-free.” Then in the process of creating I became to realize that we all ar ...
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KEYWORDS
WEN Hsin, 2012, Photographic Art
WEN Hsin, 2013, Photographic Art