Critical Evaluation

Before starting the MA course, I still remember I got an email about doing a project proposal as preparation for the start of the course. At that time, I had no idea as I didn’t have a clear topic. My works explore things in varies fields. The similarity of them is closing to our daily lives and to ourselves. In Hong Kong, when people talk about art, they always say an idiom, “art is too profound for them to understand” (藝術既野我識條鐵咩 ngai seot gei je ngo sik tiu tit me). They think art is so far away and unrelated to them. Even now, the idiom still has an impact on me. As I hold a belief that art can actually close to us and it is. Art is surrounding us. So I started to think about what does everybody has? My answer was emotion – the starting point of everything. 

 

One of the most precious things I gained from the course is I find my own direction in my art practice step by step. In the first year, I started my project with the physicality of emotion and I focus on happiness. However, I didn’t know much about emotions. So I did research in different areas such as psychology and I found interesting ideas. Moreover, I try to explore the concept of happiness from different perspectives by doing works in different medium in these 2 years. By more works I’ve done, for examples “Happiness Gas?” reflecting how people pursue their happiness nowadays, “What makes them happy?” questioning the relationship between our happiness and social standard or the mask, “There is no art to find the mind’s construction”, revealing how we use our facial expression to disguise our actual feeling, my art practice is developed deeper and further to explore human desires by looking through from emotions. I found the disguise of emotions can be an interesting way for us to understand ourselves more. I won’t forget how excited I was while I was writing the blog, Breakthrough, as I know I am making a progress to the path to be an artist. I understand it is a long journey and I know far from enough on emotions. I will go on to have further development.  

 

Apart from that, I have changed the approach to my practice from myself being not sort of them to part of them. I consider this change as self-growing. As I wrote in the reflection of Symposium 2, “I always think I could see things more clearly by the perspective of an outsider so I could always be calm and rational.” It affects my art practice but I was unconscious about that and the video “What makes them happy?” is significant as I never asked myself. Until I felt lost after I finished Unit1, I realised I am not able to do it actually. I was inside the mist of lost and I couldn’t see myself clearly. I know I can’t stay away from personal emotions anymore. This “discovery” makes me know more about myself. So I decided to face my feelings by doing the interactive work, “Lost”. I put how I felt as the core concept of the work. If I want to understand more in emotions, I must understand more about myself including actual feelings and thoughts. So, I become more open to part of my work like the smiling videos, “They told me to be happy” and I am happy for the change.   

 

For the future plan, I think I will find a job related to my techniques first so I can learn more and accumulate life experience as I feel like I am I newbie in society and I understand I do not have enough life experience in talking about humanity in deep in this stage. But there is one thing I can sure is I will keep doing art. I remember Jonathan asked what is my dream in a tutorial. I said a full-time artist but then I cried and said I wanted to give up. After the 3 week challenge, I understand deeply, in fact, I don’t want to give up as this is something I like to do. Giving up is an easy thing. But if I choose not to be, I will keep going. And I would like to set a goal for myself that my works can inspire someone one day.

 

放棄是件容易的事，但既然不想放棄，我會堅持下去。