User:10000BL/Yellow
Article 1: Yinka Shonibare - Kathleen Kuiper (2013)
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Yinka-Shonibare#ref1179768
Works: http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/artwork/photography/?image_id=49
Notes:
- Yinka Shonibare (1962, London) is a British artist of Nigerian heritage.
- Known for his examination of such ideas as authenticity, identity, colonialism, and power relations in often-ironic drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, films and installations.
- Shonibare's art was placed on its trajectory by the comments of one of his teachers, who asked him why he didn't make 'authentic African art'.
- The artist pondered the meaning of authenticity and the greater significance of his multicultural identity.
Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998; based on the narrative works of British artist William Hogarth), Shonibare created a series of photographs featuring himself as a dandy in a variety of tableaux.
Article 2: ANTHONY GOICOLEA
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: http://www.ronmandos.nl/artists/anthony-goicolea
Notes:
- In a series of photographs shot between 199 and 2002, Goicolea stages scenes depicting groups of pre-pubescent boys; the images often complex self-portrait montages of the artist himself, enacting situations which call social norms and traditions into question.
Article 3: Lee Wen
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Wen
Notes:
- Singaporean performance artist.
- Social identity themes.
- Best known for his Yellow Man performances.
- Painting his own body with bright yellow poster paint, he expresses an exaggerated symbol of his ethnic identity as a citizen of Singapore.
- 1990 study at City of London Polytechnic and it was then that Lee had found his true calling as a performance artist. He went on to develop the Yellow Man persona which gained him his first recognition in the arts community. This progressed to the Journey of a Yellow Man-series of works involving mixed-media, installation, performances and paintings.
Article 4: Journey of a Yellow Man - Lee Wen (1992)
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: http://leewen.republicofdaydreams.com/journey-of-a-yellow-man.html
Notes:
- I've used the yellow man image in various drawings and paintings. This time I was manifesting it by using my body as an element in sculpture, by painting myself yellow and appearing in performance as the yellow man. I improvised with 2 red chains of 3 meters in length each. The colors were esthetically contrasting and they soon took on symbolic values as well.
- Yellow pigment on my yellow skin was an emphasis on my ethnicity.
- I wanted to elevate the symbolism of yellow to that of the color of the sun or that of gold. If symbols were still necessary. In art today, let them be of universal appeal, going beyond ethnicity. The sun and gold have often had associations with energy, nobility and spirituality. My wish was to perhaps give the hope that man can manifest these qualities.
- The chains gave the 'impression of social bondage, constraints and restrictions on the freedom of 'individuality, movement, thought, actions, growth and behavior.
- The red color implied a sense of urgency, danger, and a sign for alertness and perhaps even blood-ties.
Article 5: Journey of a Yellow Man - Lee Wen (2009)
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: http://www.citysharing.ch/invited-projects~50.html
Notes:
- I started a series of performances entitled, Journey of a Yellow Man in London, April 1992 putting yellow pigment on my yellow skin as an emphasis on my ethnicity. Since then the Yellow Man has appeared at various times, wandering into different environments, traversing different cities in different countries, testing shifting contexts, and through these journeys identity is being put together and de-constructed.
- One of the anxieties I faced of being a Chinese Singaporean in London was that I was often being mistaken for s.b. from mainland China.
- At the same time, being first time away for a longer period, there was a greater sensitivity of prevalent racism when living in a predominantly white society.
- To the West, the otheris often seen not only as exotic, erotic or primitive but also inferior and subject to colonization.
- Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778): differentiations among the human race in four categories (These included Native Americans (Homo sapiens americanus) seen as red, ill-tempered and subjugated. The European category (Homo sapiens europeaeus) was white, serious and strong. The Asiatic (Homo sapiens asiaticus) is described as yellow, melancholy, and greedy lastly the African (Homo sapiens africanus) was depicted as black, impassive and lazy. These categories are explicitly racist stereotypical perceptions, which even today help scientists to categorize and interpret their observations).
- These contexts along with earlier explorations on identity, helped to initiate my series of Journey of a Yellow Man. Painting the body yellow alluded to various issues on my ethnicity and was also like putting on a full-body mask.
- The mask also helps to overcome our shyness of revealing ourselves as well as anxieties of stage fright when stepping in front of an audience.
Article 6: Lee Wen (b. 1957)
Retrieved: 20 march 2016
Source: http://www.ipreciation.com/lee-wen/
Notes:
- Working on social identity themes.
- Best known for his Yellow Man series of work, Lee is one of the pioneers of Performance Art in Singapore.
- Lee Wen relies on the strategic deployment of visual, kinesthetic symbols and signs in his works.
- Lee’s work has been strongly motivated by social investigations as well as inner psychological directions using art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society.