Research & Practice : Who am I

Researching others, we can know how the work is influenced and come from where,  everything is connected in the world, so how can we know the importance of researching? Today's class session we had done some exercise to know ourselves more deeply by drawing out the important memories or things that we had so far, getting to understand why we research others. I chose using the digital form to finish this exercise, it would be easier to zoom in or out when sketching the details. After drawing out the outline and then started to keep filling the body part with our memories.

Let's start with the bottom first - the early life of myself. I had a completed and perfect family in my childhood. Because of living in those old tenement buildings which had lots of casinos around us, lots of crime in this neighborhood,  so I can remember the noise of people who were drunk and shout clearly under that environment. I am glad that I have a younger brother, it's always being interesting when there are two people. My mother always took us to various extracurricular activities and this busy, fulfilling life made us a broader vision and learn more than others. 

Moving up the body, getting into primary school, I found that I am not smart, not clever but at least I'm working hard, I did more and prepare more than others, but unfortunately this still can not help me to escape and hover into the worst class of the whole school. Everyone hoped to find the personality, being cool and unique at that time, same as I and I was tired of being invested. Therefore during the rebellion, I had become abominable, from bullying others to being bullied by others, cutting the classmates hair to get acceptability...this nightmare didn’t end until high school. 

 I started to go to church and restart my mentality. I joined many clubs, met with lots of classmates and friends who just meant a lot for me, we went through lots of ups and downs together, however the good times didn’t last long. My parents were divorced,  my mental health problem started being worse. I didn't know how I could help with the expense so at the age of 15, I started to work part-time after school. Trying to reduce the burden of my mother, at the same time my mentality was about to collapse. I had to run for director and prepare for the entrance examination, I felt like I couldn't breathe. Therefore it can be seen I added a crack in my half body. I don't know how I get through with this predicament and I don't usually want to think or either talk about these memories, because it's just been a past tense already.

The Hong Kong social movement in 2019 has also changed a lot for me, the most influential thing in my life happened during this half-year. From peaceful demonstrations to bravely stepping forward to resist, I took the first aid course and got to help people under the environment which was full of tear gas.  Still from now, I feel depressed and emotional when I am writing this paragraph. If it were not for the incompetence of the current government and the arbitrary arrests, I might not be able to sit here and tell you about my story, maybe I am still living in a occupied political environment for survival.  

It is true that the stories behind each person affect their thoughts and ways of doing things. Due to the fact that my parents were divorced, my artworks had been mostly painted in black and white in middle school. So based on this exercise, I fully understand that research is not just about their work, it is also the way to know their background, how they influence, how the final work performs like this, everything is getting related with each other. Hope at the following artist research blog post, I can recover more about how their background to extend and form the work, develop the research process more detaily.