YanYun Chen and H.R. Webster
The presentation began with a nice man from the humanities department introducing himself, a group read, and other events the humanities department plans on throwing. With rows of seats filled with students along with staff, we were all engaged. He then gave a brief introduction to the speakers for the day and a summary of what they will be talking about.
Award winning visual artist Yanyun Chen came out to a round of applause. After just recently moving to Boston from Singapore, it was her first time being at Umass Boston. She starts by talking about how “still life is not still” while showing her remarkable art pieces of flowers on the screen. She goes into how flowers are in relation to politics and how every place has their national flower. She creates charcoal drawings of real and fake flowers. During the pandemic, Covid made her think of touch and how we weren’t able to touch eachother and the idea of gentle-ism. I think her art in this area was really good and how she shows everyone touching through the scarf and other ways.
She then talks about her art on Keloids and how they’re well-known in south asia and are in her genetics. She describes them as,“they keep going throughout your life and just doesn’t stop.” People in Singapore have shame around these scars because they do not fit certain “beauty standards.” She started to weld her family members scars and write their stories through her art. Some of her pieces she put gold foil on the scars to present them as nothing to be ashamed of and that it is important to highlight them. She focuses on highlighting the beauty in “imperfections” which is something I also value.
“What does it mean to carry someone elses stories?” She talks about how else can she share her families stories and then shows us a part of one of her films that correlates to womanhood and our fate and the idea of “marry a rich man and you’ll be set for life.” She also shares pieces of her culture such as dowry chests and the significance of them which is how woman were able to keep their valued items instead fo giving money to their grooms family, and lanterns and how they are used as signals. I really like her photography work in this chapter when she was using red lights, reflections, chests, lanterns, etc. I love her creativity and how she reflects stories through her art by the little things. I always admire artists for how creative they are.
H.R. Webster an abolitionist, writer, and poet comes our and starts by reading a piece full of such strong emotion. Her soft spoken words hit hard as she talks about metaphors and poetry. “I don’t believe that poetry is a form of empathy.” She brings up the topic of ferality alot and says, “animals once tamed can never become wild again.” She was reading the poems that she wrote while living and writing about her experiences in the woods and talks about her journey through writing and publishing them.
Webster then goes into reading some more of her poems. She talks about her childhood and family history. She uses alot of metaphors that I think were really good comparisons. “We waited by the trashcan like babydolls waiting in their box over night.” She is also very descriptive and very good at painting the picture for me, I almost feel like I am in the poems.
After that, both ladies open up for questions after a brief thank you from the Humanities Department. Jill McDonough, a professor of humanities at Umass Boston, kicks off with a question about the feral children and asks if they connect that to lack of touch and the pandemic. Chen responds with developing a new language. After her teacher passing away, it sort of gave her inspiration to take risks and continue her teachers work. Webster responds with how she, along the lines of, “pursued aloneness through language that she witnessed a lot of other people having to experience it and had no wisdom to provide for them.” After others’ from the audience asked their deep and creative questions, the two had thanked us for being there.
I really enjoyed seeing them present their work to us in different ways. As someone who has always been interested in art and different cultures, it was so interesting to me hearing about their different experiences. I also really enjoyed Websters tone of reading. It was so effortless and seemed as though it came so natural to her. It was enjoyable to hear. I was inspired by these two young woman who have pursued art in their careers and have been successful in doing so. I plan on following more of their artwork in the future.
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