Shadows of Strange Things

Curated by Nicholas Tsoutas
SCA Graduate School Gallery
Sydney College of the Arts,
Balmain Road, Rozelle

Official open 21 March, 5pm
Gallery open Mon-Fri 11am-4.30pm
6 to 29 March 2013

Shadows of Strange Things
By Tianli Zu

Strange things burst into creation – seemingly beautiful, yet rebellious and grotesque- unmasking a sense of restlessness, anxiety, doubt, rage, contradiction and refusal.

My work both conceals and reveals the spontaneous movement of the shadow: a metaphorical and illusive form that whilst ungraspable and obscure, can stimulate questioning, emotions and a wide range of interpretations.

The way I work is both sensual and conscious of control. Intuitively cutting paper on a large scale has helped me reconstruct my world-view of life and art. When I cut through paper, I experience a sense of ‘killing’; simultaneously, I give ‘birth’. Each cut sheds some light, exposing what I confront each day.

Engaging with fragments of childhood memories and symbols of emotions that are embedded with hidden meanings, “Shadows of Strange Things” exhibits a simultaneous process of looking inward and outward. The multiple focus and outof-focus points in the work unify the intuitively hand-cut objects, the multi-channel animations narrate memory flashbacks interwoven amongst mythical tales, and finally, the projection of light casts shadows by pure chance. This art-making process – from a creator’s initiation to its release – echoes the phenomenon of a complex contemporary society: human are partly in control and partly out of control, and the conflict between nature and technology is in constant change and negotiation.

Shadows – a relative truth of disharmony – begin to wander and move towards freedom.