Ran Li

“You are a girl, you need to behave gracefully" I heard countless words like such through out my childhood, which shaped and distorted me subconsciously and comparable with the distorted image of the deer. The deer represents my parents’ expectation to their beloved single daughter: the metaphor of elegance, gracefulness and positive attitude.

By creating this image of distorted deer fur pattern, I visualised the awakening and expression of my self-consciousness, projecting it upon the space, time and memories. The deer fur talks about the disguise of one’s skin and the idea of camouflage. The visual imagery of the melted form, can be seen as mysterious alien forms in my work, reflecting the surreal and absurdist quality of my own narratives.

As apple is the metaphor of the epiphany of knowledge acquisition for Newton, I used apple in my practice as the metaphor of a beginning or a start , my attempt to return to myself, to let my consciousness and emotion roam free.

I am projecting myself onto this apple. The melted apple for me, then in turn represents a state of running away from my parents’ well protection, gaining the freedom to some degree of being an individual grown-up in this society. The surreal quality of this work is a poetic way to suggest his struggle in my mental state.

“Running like a headless chicken” is an English saying which means a state of panic, where there are too many things happening at the same time, and without planning or purpose and it is hard to do things effectively.

To me, it could also be interpreted to describe the busy life of modern urban people, how it is filled with work and too little time for themselves. They feel busy pursuing the material world but the spiritual world is forgotten.

Inspired by Henri Matisse’s famous painting “Dance” in 1910. I used dancing chickens to create two necklaces which talks about this social issue in an ironic way.