Waiting Like A Prostitute, Half Ashamed Half Despairing
Installation, 2015
Artist’s personal clothes, audio, amplifier, neon light, sun bed, bamboo stick, hanger, rope, bucket, mop, basin, fork
Size: Varied
In the summer of 2015, I did an art residency in Xiamen, China. My accommodation was a small room in a budget hotel in a busy area popular with tourists. Every day returning from my studio after midnight, I would encounter many sex workers lingering around the area seeking potential clients. When they noticed me, they would start walking ahead for a time, pretending to be ordinary passers-by. Over the course of the three-month residency, I had innumerable imaginary conversations with them and, by the end, I felt I knew them and had grown a connection with them.
In the solo exhibition marking the end of the residency, I created a balcony for a fictional sex worker in the heart of a busy commercial shopping centre, with all my personal clothes that I brought to Xiamen hung on the laundry lines. This was accompanied by a recording of a female voice humming along to ‘Forget Him‘, a melancholic Chinese love song from the 80s. The audio was broadcast day and night in the shopping centre.
This work is dedicated to the sex workers on Zhongshan pedestrian street in Xiamen, whom I encountered and exchanged sorrows with in the summer of 2015. I hope they are getting by, and are treated with kindness.
像妓女一样等待，一半羞耻一半悲伤
装置，2015
艺术家私人衣物，音频，扩音喇叭，霓虹灯，藤椅，竹竿，衣架，绳子，水桶，拖把，脸盆，晾衣叉
尺寸可变
