Tanglingtai 

  Works

  Installations

  Resume

  Exhibitions

  Contact

  Links

      This work is an ongoing series of themes that deals with children's stories and games. It was inspired by a recent trip I took to Beijing. In China I took many photographs of young girls of 9 or 10 years old documenting their mannerisms and attitudes. During my tip I was looking for a change in the air. I found a tremendous contrast between old and new China, between communism and consumerism. The girls I documented were children born after the Tiananmen square conflict. I photographed them deliberately because of their age. In these girls I could see a confident spirit, China's future.
      The installation TANGLINGTAI was created to commemorate China's future… China Girls. The format for the work began form reading the Chinese folk story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. In the story two lovers offer an intense solution to a feudal family conflict. Unwilling to yield to the pressured of a tyrannous society of arranged marriages and unfair system of order, the lovers end their own lives and are transformed into butterflies and fly away.
      The kites I created were based on traditional Chinese butterfly and moth kites that are to this day used by children. The image on the kite is a set of twins I photographed at the Beijing Zoological Gardens. I chose the twins because of their double image and their camouflage, Rorschach quality they project to the viewer. The room is caught in a web of colorful string meant to portray the young lovers' entanglement with the mores and attitudes of the day; the kites symbolize their eventual transcendence. Each of the twelve kites stretches out to predict endless prossiblities for the New Year of the dragon.