Joseph
Hu
"Certain Stories Become Part of a Culture; a Link
Forms Between Their Myths and Themselves", 2001
Mixed Media with Projection (Installation View)
Artist Statement
Memory has become the driving force in my work;
memory of time and events from when I was a child up to the
memory of this morning. I'm interested in how one records or
creates a record of those memories, and then how one recalls
them, what it means o reminisce, to recall. I think that my
memories are an account of disconnectedness, a disconnectedness
that stems from a break in culture and generations. They are
a place for me to look to the origins of my feelings now.
I have been trying to find a balance between being Chinese and
being a young male that grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest.
Part of my problem lies in the fact that I don't know enough
about my "other" culture to balance with the culture
that I grew up in.
Bits and pieces of my memory resurface are reborn as the material
for my investigations. Underlying this process is an attempt
to heel, to reconnect, and to understand that which separates
me. My work exists in a semi-permanent floating space; image
and the manipulation of atmosphere become the arena for personal
re-experience.
I use images from my memory and transform them. Some of the
things that I remember are the many small sculptures, vases,
paintings and other objects that decorated my parents' home:
tings (ceremonial vessels, in this case transformed into an
ice bucket), small carved wooden statues of old wise fisherman,
large watercolor landscape paintings and the brass incense and
candle sticks used in an ancestral ceremony. I am trying to
decipher the meanings of all these images, both their real purpose
and what they mean to me.
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images:
Stefan
Abrams, Robin
Braun, Nick
Cassway, Jill
Galloway,
David
Gerbstadt, Eve
Hoyt, Joseph
Hu, Chris
Vecchio,
Andrew Jeffrey
Wright/Clare Rojas
