Transformation of Home
“Transformations of Home” concentrates on the home as a locus for change. The artists in this section document how their relationships with “home” have been made unfamiliar, whether because of the current global pandemic, growth during college, or other reasons. Spanning a variety of media and subjects, each artwork reflects the lived experiences of the artists as they witness the familiar becoming strange.
HOMID-19 (2020)
Manchen Hu
Stanford University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhan, China
Manchen dedicates himself to navigating the combination of art and science in search of the uniformity and convergence of the two. He wishes to provoke the sensations that human beings are losing in the era of technological development and in turn use technology to extend the border of the art world.
Home is Where I Escaped From and Where Haunts Me (2020)
Jianfei Lyu
Wellesley College
Beijing, China
“The series of photographs is from the quarantined months from March to May, containing time I spent at school, on the airplane flying to my home country, and the fourteen days of strict quarantine in hotels. I gradually lose my sanity during these days. But sometimes I found the campus is like a sanatorium, and afraid of the idea that one day the world will go back to normal again and endless pressure and competition resume. How funny it is that now my life is almost back to before and I delved into the old pattern with complete ease. Looking back to this time, the photos only exist in that dimension. I missed my home when I was on campus, anxious about getting a flight ticket, but after I went back, I'm again anxious about US-China relations. We are all feeble leaves straying in the flood where no direction is foretold. But we remain strong, and we are witnessing everything.”
Do you want to talk about it? (Imagine if I had said no); Room for One (2020)
Grace Chen
Rhode Island School of Design
Canada
“Revolving around the notion of universality in specificity, my work aims to evoke genuine self-reflection whether that be a minor change in disposition or a drastic shift in perspective. I am motivated by crafting spaces of warmth and immersive realities through traditional and digital drawing and painting, sometimes even merging these means for animation, for the enjoyment of others.”
Untitled (2020)
Mollie Redman
Brown University
Bedford, NH, US
“I painted this while outside of my “home” in Providence. Calling college “home” doesn’t feel natural because home has historically been where my whole family lives. In the painting the chair is not broken, so it is unreasonable to place a cone on it. However, the longer the cone sits there, the more it feels like it belongs on the chair. Similarly, the longer I have been in college, the more Providence feels like home.”
Untitled
2020
Acrylic on paper
Phone Call (2020)
Mulan Mu
Wellesley College
Ningbo, China
“I am 7000 miles away from the place I called ‘home,’ with no idea when I could go back. My only connection with my home is through the phone. Home is a phone call to my other self, who is from another dimension carrying memories and feelings of home, yet existing theoretically. In this process, ‘home’ decays into something fleeting and theoretical, too. We talked about everything, good or bad, except going back.”
Phone Call
2020
Digital art
