Title: Braids
Year: 2009
Medium: sculpture and performance | PVC tubing, wire, live performance
Dimension/Duration: approx. 640 x 610 x 370 in (sculpture)/approx. 20 min (performance)
Venue: Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, South Korea
Braids was a site-specific performance sculpture presented during the 2009 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale in South Korea. This giant sculpture was a monumental representation of woman’s hair symbolizing Asian women’s resistance to not only traditional social restraints in Asia but also stereotypes and microaggressions projected onto them by Western perspectives.
I exaggerated black PVC tubing to represent long black hair, referring to a common feature of Asian women. During the opening, I braided the giant black tubing to amplify the act of a mother preaching to her daughter while braiding her hair. In this piece, I acted as both the braider and the woman who has her hair braided by society. I examined the dual meanings of being restrained as well as generating a revitalized energy state.
This site-specific work was created for the 2009 Incheon Women Artists Biennale under the Tuning Exhibition entitled The 21st Century, the Feminine Century, and the Century of Diversity and Hope, curated by Heng-Gil Han, with support by the Taipei Cultural Center of TECO in New York.
