The Wind, Changshu Art Museum, 2012

While I was looking through the sketches and pictures of Xiangmei Su's multimedia installation works, I felt a strong and refreshing aroma of  the warm breeze of the Pacific Ocean. Two Thousand hand-made pinwheels carrying the scent of earth and the innocence of childhood hang in the air through the entire exhibition space, sharing with the audience her experience of her cultural transition and her journey of the heart. These pinwheels are like a whirlwind, spreading from the exhibition hall, out from the windows of the gallery as if they are carrying an invisible force, breaking through the glass wall and flying to an unknown world in order to rebuild a new space, a new self. Just as a new wind comes from the spinning pinwheel, Xiangmei's piece creates a fresh breeze of ideas and a new space that belongs to her."

 

In the first exhibition hall, Xiangmei Su uses ready-made objects such as a washing machine, a red painted wooden basin, an enamel basin, and a wooden bench that are recognizable by people as items closely related to activities of real life. These items are used as metaphors for the new and the old, the traditional and the contemporary. The everyday jobs of rubbing, twirling and rinsing in which they are used, suggest the idea and the function of the process of change.  Small pinwheels rise from the washing machine flying toward the sky, suggesting the unique scene of an idyllic landscape. This idyllic landscape is in fact what is disappearing under the process of urbanization. The photographs hanging on the walls document the tremendous change in the artist's hometown, and reflect on the reality of its tempestuous transformation. In the photograph “Moving”, a big wardrobe stands in the middle of the road in a destroyed old village,  waiting for its owner to move into a new home. Behind the wardrobe, there are high-rises towering aloft one by one. This old wardrobe is an object with special vitality, connecting the past, present and future. It bears families history, the people’s suffering and struggle during the transformation of their society, and carries the hope for people in the future.

 

Xiangmei Su uses the methods of conceptual art to explore the transformation of her two cultures through the photography works in the first Exhibition Hall and the projection/installation work in the second Exhibition Hall. The photography and video work Mei/May are very representative of her approach. These works have some similarity with the works of the renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and yet they also display some difference in experience and inspiration. The two works present the liveliness of the artists’ inner monologue, conversation and complications. The headphone of the mobile phone connects and passes through the new and the old, the inside and the outside, outlining a sense of belonging to a recombined culture, a redefinition of personal cultural identity which almost seems to have been inborn by nature. 

 

Xiangmei Su is a perfect example of an artist who straddles two cultures, who seeks to explore her art and life through the collision and pain of constant change. The two different cultures she embraces and her experience of struggling with them gives her inspiration and motivation to achieve and to share her understanding of life in her own space.