text by Jian Tzu-Chieh
From a distance it appears to be a circle, one that exudes a brilliant fine texture but an object the eye finds difficult to focus on. Mia Lu recently won a prize at the Kaohsiung Awards for “I am Mia Lu” which superficially appears to include a few irregular patterns made up of lines of differing thickness. Although the patterns appear random the relationship between the two is built on a matrix-like system and as a result it visually calls to mind a manmade interface somewhat like a computer printout.
But the patterns are exceptionally exquisite, forcing one to move closer to get a better look and it is only then that we see the work is mady with unsold Guggenheim museum tickets piled together. On each one is scribbled the name “Mia Liu” in marker pen, each one in a slightly different shades of black and grey. Perhaps arranged by the artist deliberately or a result of the materials, but seen from above the signatures together with the original pattern and printed pictures on the tickets suddenly reveal the small differences between the creative materials, a visual effect that is enticing, that draws one in even though it is difficult to explain exactly what one sees with its existing language.
Spinning and Dazzling (閃爍而翻轉)
Mia Lu has also made other pieces from Guggenheim museum tickets. Such a difficult image reflects much contemporary art with its mixtures of various artistic languages. Moreover, the “circle” alludes to a specific iconographic symbol which in turn encourages us to view it from the perspective of a symbolic painting. When we take a closer look we notice that this is in fact a complex object made from collected ready made tickets. The tickets are placed with their backsides facing the audience, making them not something to be read but more a sensory feeling. At the same time the series of piled tickets ensure that these objects appear to transcend the two dimensional of painting into bas relief sculpture. Finally, the tickets have the artist’s name inscribed on them, or holes punched into them, so that when placed in the circular structure there are all different kinds of bits of paper sticking out, an image that evokes an uncatchable visual rhythm, one that escapes our visual focus to become light and shade, like OP Art low key, repetitive, lacking in symbols but still able to dazzle.
Tickets are in fact IDs granting entrance to the global chain store museums. In other words the material itself is already a record of powerful cultural politics, indicating those objects are identified and accepted by authority (including works and artists). When Mia Liu writes her name on the tickets, that act changes the meaning of the material, because signing one’s name is never just a matter of style but also signifies acceptance or is viewed as evidence of ownership or a sign of approval. However, in this instance a contemporary artist deliberately leaves her own personal stamp on the tickets which could also explain the artist’s desire to be recognized by a great art institution, and although desires are fluid, they contained hidden within them a certain degree of cynical leeway.
Drawing
Mia Liu’s creative background is very different from those of most young artists making a splash in the field of contemporary art in Taiwan today. She studied mainly in the US, graduating from San Francisco Art Institute in 2007 and attending graduate school at Hunter College in New York the same year. With her many years of experience living and studying in the US, Liu emphasizes that her work is closely related to the “drawing” art that has long been popular in US and Europe.
As an artist, my creative focus has been on creating visual experiences that people may find interesting and moving by allowing the emotions that take hold of me in the creative moment to flow freely. I enjoy free drawing and much of the inspiration for that comes from the characteristics or distinctive aesthetic of certain materials. On occasion the medium itself can inspire me to imagine an installation and enable the creative motif to become clearer (Mia Liu ‘Collected Works’ 2009).
Quoting from the well received book “Vitamin D” (“D” refers to drawing) published by Phaidon press not so long ago, and the establishment in 1977 of “The Drawing Center”, a non profit organization in New York, Mia Liu points out that “drawing” is now far from the narrow art genre it is often thought to be. It can be representational or abstract, large scale or tiny; it can include complex materials and improvised work. From the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci to the musical scores of musicians, “drawing” is not merely a modern fad.
Using “Vitamin D” as a reference, Mia Liu emphasizes that drawing is highly descriptive and in a manner that can be qualitatively detailed. It focuses not so much on issues of theory defining the parameters of what does or doesn’t constitute drawing, because everything can be connected to the experiential field of drawing regardless of whether it is private, unofficial, immediate, identity, memory, narrative etc. autonomous. Drawing has always been used by many artists, but recently its openness, the importance it gives to the emotions, and even the way in which it transcends easy pigeonholing, has begun to attract more people. For Mia Liu, most important is how the creative form of drawing offers a great deal of freedom and openness.
For a local art critic such as myself, Taiwan also has a form of artistic expressionism that approximates “drawing,” but as with any newly introduced artistic concepts, it not only needs a long period of encouragement before taking root, but local developments of new ideas invariably become something different from the original. As such, before this long process is completed, similar local works are likely to be considered sketching, diagrams or art documenta. These pieces are considered transitional, coming from before or after a “successful artist” completes a classic work, or are alternatively incorporated into an all-inclusive painting tradition by a simpler but more efficient method of classification. Other than the fact that Mia Liu’s focus on drawing requires her audience to pay closer attention, I would say that this approach could well pen up a much needed middle way away from the trend towards political art that is currently so prevalent in contemporary Taiwanese art.
I am Mia Liu
Despite the intimate relationship between drawing and painting, for Mia Liu this is not a medium restricted to graphic expressionism. Broadly speaking, for the artist this genre involves a creative attitude that involves others. In fact, Liu prefers to classify works such as “I am Mia Liu” which is made with Guggenheim Museum tickets as “Drawing Objects.” Indeed, this series can be traced further back to “Drawing Installations” and “Drawing Landscapes.” In such context, her drawing has a powerful connective power with “installations” always utilizing the existing environment as a site specific parameter in her work. When we trace the tickets and their site specificity it is difficult to avoid looking on this as part of the artist’s intent to transform concepts of everyday life.
“The inspiration for “I am Mia Liu” came from a job I had as a ticket seller at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In this piece I used tickets from the Museum as a creative vehicle in an attempt to transform the fixed meaning of an everyday object. Through this medium the work takes graphic drawing and evolves it into images and visual effects with many viewing points, all different. I also tried to sign my name in English to replace “drawing” but that not only formed a picture but went still further in hinting to viewers my own dreams.”
On the one hand this dream refers to the artist’s yearning to reach the lofty heights of the art world’s elite. When Liu worked as a ticket girl at the Guggenheim Museum: “Every day I came into contact with tourists from all over the world and we would struggle to communicate with vastly different English accents and pronunciations or by gesticulating. Those US$18 tickets were like a pass into art Heaven.” Perhaps many of these foreign tourists went on and kept their tickets as mementi of having spent so much for the pleasure, but for our artist working at the museum, this was a transitory object passing through her hands innumerable times each day as part of her job.
As such, dreams here refer not just to the desire to “show my work at the Guggenheim Museum one day.” Ultimately, the “picture” formed with the English signature that replaces drawing is just one of the results of doing that. The point is, issues such as how to elevate or enhance the quality of this transitory material and at the same time view tickets as a work of art, could be the dream of visitors and ticket sellers. This pass into Art’s Heaven not only gives the bearer actual authority, but is in reality an everyday event.
Crowds Comprise her Realm
As such the arena in which “drawing” takes place could be merely a piece of paper at ones fingertips, this degree of openness often presents itself as an almost magical transformative technique. It can take different ways from here to there but the destination is never known, that is the openness of drawing. Ultimately, the drawing objects of Mia Liu become a circle, repeating, forming an endless loop, but at one side of this independent system there is always a bigger system, that is the museum that long ago became global contemporary art chain stores and outside this bigger system artists wander to depict a world that belongs to themselves and only to themselves.
A more recent work, “My Eco-Vat” is also made out of Guggenheim tickets that are piled up to create what appears to be a self enclosed eco-system. I found myself thinking of what Charles Baudelaire had said in Crowds, “The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights of which the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived.” What is important is facing the paradoxes of others because the public cannot be owned by anyone, but at this moment they form an introspective world and craft the artist’s complex image. Mia Liu has said that during her time living in New York she liked to stroll through Central Park on weekends and enjoy the strange flora there that helped “make me determined to create my own garden,” but here she also signed her name on the museum tickets to turn them into an artwork that hopefully ensures she is remembered.
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