YI-Ting, Liu (07/03/2019)

Disciplines: Belongings, Anthropology, Collection

Aims:

Within 21st century, mass productive items are being see as a usual thing and happening in our daily lives, which makes me think that how does this have impact on humans’ action. In relation to the material culture nowadays, how do we see our personal belongings and what do we think by those stuff that we surrounded by.

My project will be focus on questioning about why people collect things related to their different personalities and growing backgrounds. My intention is to walk into other people houses to investigate the story behind those stuff they have and digging into their memories especially focusing on their personal collection. I intended to use Anthropology as a perspective to understand those stuff that we have and why these things are so important for us. Through the process of interviewing different people that I am interested in within different countries, I can extend my feelings to stuff and then express them within my paintings.

Objectives:

• To explore the relationship between one’s personality and their belongings

• To broaden my feelings of objects, stories, memories.

- Collecting different stories related to someones collection (In the end, I become a collector of others’ memories and stories)

What I intended to do:

Interviewing

• Visiting collectors house and see their collections

Relationship between still life, art and Anthropology

• Look at other artist’s work which related to different period of times still life paintings

• Reading books: The comfort of things (Daniel Miller), Stuff (Daniel Miller), Image of recollection and Remembrance (Joan Gibbons)

• Watching documentary which related to a collection or archive

Expected outcomes:

• Develop works that based on different stories I collect and create a narrative within a series of paintings or drawings

• Documenting those stories that I collect and then maybe create a short poem for each story

• Using film camera to take photos of those collection

Potential Collaborators:

I will try to contact the collectors and Anthropologist on the list below.

Collectors (In Taiwan)

1. Christine Chu (an artist and professor)-collection: antiques and toys

2. KEA (a sculptor and curator)-collection: toys

Anthropologist (In UK)

1. Daniel Miller

Time Line:

March

• Contacting collaborators

April

• Interview with the collectors

• Review the photos I take and see the outcomes

• Interview with Anthropologist

May

• Complete the Supporting written documentation

• Collecting all the photos I take and print them well

• Create a visual presentation