Tender Resilience: Exploration and Interpretation of the Female Image

• Main Authors: LEONG HOI SA, 梁海莎
• Other Authors: Tsai Huai Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ew55cy

碩士 === 國立臺北藝術大學 === 美術學系碩(博)士班 === 105 === My female image is one with a yearning for tenderness. I seek to express the power of resilience arising from tenderness, exploring forms manifesting the female image and interpreting through personal emotions and mental depictions. In Section One of the Introduction, I highlight "tender resilience" as a female trait. Using the touching stories of two outstanding women, I offer my ode to women who possess the tenderness in depending on others while having independent and self-reliant resilience. Section Two speaks to the prevalent lament for the dying of youth and vigor in songs and poems past and present. People strive to retain their youth, but time is merciless in its passing and takes the beauty of youth along the way. People long for eternalness in love exactly because of its evanescence. Wouldn't it be wonderful if youth can thrive forever? The spring blossom is such beautiful fleeting beauty, just like the ephemeral beauty of youth. I have congealed the evanescent gesture of the spring blossom on a rock in honor of this fleeting beauty. In Chapter Two, I find inspiration from Sen no Rikyu's pursuit of ultimate beauty and propose that the interpretation of beauty requires a return to the inner world of every person because it is a mirror that reflects one's innermost changes and feelings. Life is revealed as soon as you collect your scattered thoughts and focus on understanding the moment at hand. My forms come from stirrings in life. These stirrings originate from discoveries and observations of life. The power condensed inside plant seeds, flower buds and shellfishes is so saturated; the natural gesture of their outward thrust is so subtle; those folds and crevices appear symmetric and yet somewhat different. The sumptuous living energy embodied therein and the gesture of outward release are as rich with femininity as a mother waiting to deliver life. The interpretation of the female image in my works is extracted from a flower bud or a shellfish waiting to spread. The slightly open state symbolizes women in their prime youth, full of imagination and expectation for life and love and yet quiet and reserved--shyly waiting in a constrained state. Chapter Three articulates step by step the relationship I have with stone sculptures by means of delineating the relationship between human and stone. The stone has existed over millions of years, its surface and texture infused with the vestige of time as if documenting its passing. And yet, it expresses its existence with nothing but silence, just like every individual in this world. The stone traverses through time and space to meet with me, and I honor the passing of life with stone, expressing my self-reflection and discourse on life through the vessel of sculpture. Faced with passing time, my yearning to find longevity grows. Hard materials are time-consuming but sophisticated. To find permanence and true character, I use modern tools to sculpt the oldest medium. Stones, formed over millennia, have existed long before humans appeared on earth. Humans use stone for different expressions and statements, from the grandest architecture in the world to pieces of jade worn on oneself. In my stone sculptures, I portray my own projection on life and emotions in a human scale and human living space to convey a perspective on life. Chapter Four contains writing about personal learning in stone sculpture, creative journeys, spatial thinking about artwork configurations and my descriptions of six stone sculptures completed during graduate school. In my future practice, I will continue to impart my creative thinking and thoughts through my own life experience, expressing personal emotions and internalized viewpoints through the creative form while applying uniquely female lexicons. I look forward to realizing works with expanded nuances and layered readings.