Past Student Work

Shu Lea Cheang and Mongrel

Posted by Sabrina on

Shu Lea Cheang is a new media artist who focuses in societal issues, identity and governmental power using different multimedia platforms. A project of hers titled the Locker Baby Project centered around Ryu Murakami’s novel Coin Locker Babies (1980), a fictional world where test tube babies were bred in coin lockers in the subways of Tokyo. The installation was in three parts, Baby Play, Baby Love and Baby Work. Below, I’ve shown examples of the installation Baby Love, a spinning teacup ride where baby clone and human ride together. ME or Memory Emotion data that the baby clones contain in this installation are filled will love songs that get jumbled and mashed up as the ride continues. The clones exchange data with each other as they spin and create a remix of data that is later broadcasted. I found this interesting because it showed a sci-fi criticism of these cloned babies and taken something innocent and fun as a teacup ride and turned it into this crazy jumbled chaos.

An artist group called Mongrel is one that makes art focused on identity specifically in race. In their exhibition Colour Separation, a software compiles images of faces and turns them into eight general sterotypes of white/yellow/brown/black men and women 
These masks are then composited onto real images of people, creating a literal mask onto the base face, the color usually different from the base face creating this racial dichotomy. It poses the question why are these faces have the color “sewn” onto their faces. The faces are also at times spat on, questioning who is the abuser and who is the abused. I like this piece because it creates all of these interesting questions and is left pretty anonymous and open ended which leaves the viewer up to its own interpretation.