Where we can stay
Materials: Lipstick, knife, dress, scissors, mirror, body, phone shot.
Size: 760mb, mp4.
Created in: 10/2023
This performance art video is an extension of What we need to be in the previous piece of performance art. In the film, she truly reflects the survival and creative dilemma faced by an artist in the case of being a woman and being a female artist. The artist rented an empty room for a month for a limited amount of money as a temporary shelter. There was nothing in the house except some of her old expensive makeup, her special graduation dress, and a knife and scissors. This empty room is just like the social environment of female artists. The shot of her undressing represents the social gaze on women and the stereotype of female artists. When the skirt is removed, she still wears black clothes to cover her whole body, which is her resistance to the external gender gaze and prying desire.
She keeps turning the back and blade of the knife to try to cut a non-existent apple, inspired by the fact that she hurt her hand when she cut an apple as a child, and the invisible apple symbolizes the ideas and knowledge that have been forcibly instilled. Like when she tried to fight it all but cut her own hand because she couldn't find the actual object of the fight and didn't know the direction of the blade. The dress symbolizing ideal and art is not enough to withstand the coming winter, and even if she takes off and tears the artist identity symbolized by the dress, she cannot solve the problem, and the spiritual pursuit binds her to escape this empty room. As time goes by, the countdown sound becomes the beating and struggling sound of the heart, all of which comes to an abrupt end when the church bell rings, whether the female artist's way out is found by her, how she should change such a difficult living environment, everything is unknown suspense.