(1994)
This
series of masks was made in 1994, my second year in the United States.
I was very excited and dazzled by this highly materialist modern
world, by various new ideas and the sudden freedom for which I was
completely unprepared after growing up in mainland China. Meanwhile,
I was also under a shadow of sorrow.
I
feel some sadness for my father, a man who seems always content,
even in the worst situation. I also feel sad for my mother, who
had to stop her career as a promising neurologist in Beijing because
of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. For ten years, during the most
creative period in her life, she had to work in a small rural town
in southern China as a simple medical worker. She is the most self-motivated
and self-disciplined woman I have ever met. Although she has never
stopped improving herself, she still feels resentment. After coming
back from United State as a visiting scholar, she urged me to go
to this country to "take a look at the world"not
to be "as happy as a fool." As a college teacher by that
time, I was pretty content with my life; I did not understand and
was even annoyed by her constant urging...
A
picture I saw in a Chinese newspaper kept reappearing in my minda
group of children, foolish looking, in front of the camerathey
were found in a very small, isolated village where over many generations
the population had become inbred. More than half of the residents
are seriously retarded. Poverty and hunger surrounded them, but
their blank and dream-like faces told me that none of them was aware
of their terrible situationonly those who had experienced
other possibilities could cry for them. It seems that the more you
open your eyes to look around and be conscious of where you are,
the more joyful you should be; however, the pain usually doubles
with the joy.
Struggling
between these ambivalent feelings, I found myself being strongly
drawn by those African maskseyes slightly closed, mouth loosely
opened, no curiosity, no surprise, no precaution, no desire, no
pain, no joy, no worries...as pure as a new born baby before opening
its eyes to look at this tumultuous world...
Although
I know its too late for me...