Wedding Veil: The Space Between

As I slowly open up the tea bags once consumed and left to be discarded, I found myself filling up an empty glass container shaped like a heart. The sediments of the teabags were placed into the center of this container and were 3-D scanned to create a memory of it. 

What became of it is part of the ceiling and wall of this space you are navigating in. The scale of the broken 3-dimensional heart exists in a much larger scale of the suit. Partaking a large part of my very being, being an artist at times is letting your heart out. To be explored, understood, dissected, and viewed upon, a wedding towards my art, a commitment to an idea, will not truly be one without a heart.

I allowed it to not have any texture as the stark contrast of nothingness was what I wanted in contrast to a suit that is full of color and words. 

"Our Feet Touched the Ground" is a spoken word video and a dance towards the interpretation of dancing with tea. In the historical context, teabags were not produced until the 1900s and were made for convenience and an easy throw-out method.

Knowing this made me more aware of the teabags that I consume and how I no longer drink loose-leaf as often. China has a few thousand years of history of tea and made me think about how did I lose the traditional way of consuming it. I then thought about my identity as both Chinese and American and collected a ton of tea that has been used as well as their covers. I wanted to first sculpt a veil and then a suit to bring to 3-dimensional space. But before so, I wanted to think about the cultural social identities and my act in doing so. Hence I wrote a poem about how it might feel to be a teabag in a human technology world. 

"I enter and fall at the bottom of the hollow void.
I float upon the color that was squeezed out of me as I return onto a flat surface. 

I am taken out to be placed by the side of the container of boiling water to be discarded.

Before I was placed in this container, my feet touched the ground. 

Before I became a natural cyborg:
We spoke.
We touched.
We played.
We shared.
We danced.
And our feet touched the ground."

I enter and fall at the bottom of the hollow void. I float upon the color that was squeezed out of me as I return onto a flat surface. I am taken out to be placed by the side of the container of boiling water to be discarded. Before I was placed in this container, my feet touched the ground. Before I became a natural cyborg: We spoke. We touched. We played. We shared. We danced. And our feet touched the ground.

A generated texture map of the wedding veil is displayed to pay mind to it. As part of the process to bake the materials onto the 3-D scan, it is installed as a display for others to take a closer look. Upon view, one is taking part in the way scans are produced as well as file materials. Could we look at digital texture and materiality the same way we do with physical materiality? What stops us from using one compared to the other?

Without its texture, without a UV wrap, without its color, it is devoid of the representation of teabags, but the raw representational aesthetic of teabags inside a computer. 

A microscopic view of a texture image from the scans of teabags. From it, one can see colorful diverse rectangles without corners with gradient bringing attention to its center. 

This whole concept of wanting to collect tea and use all it parts in making a veil and a suit and keeping the sediments to be scanned came from the idea of Marrying my art. Hence a wedding veil used in a different context of marrying a person and to keep the bride from being modest, untouched, and hiding evil away from happiness. But with the use of found materiality fabricated build a different narrative, I wanted to take different ownership of our roles and identities. 

I hence scanned my body with the placement of another veil above it facing the same suit I was wearing to create a vow. A bigger self is looking and approving of this promise to commit to my art. To continue even when I am sick; until death does us apart. To have my art living even if it means virtual. To have it dying even when it is living. How do we then say goodbye to our art?  

The insides of the suit that act as a wall have given it form. The artist's subjective view on how the suit is able to create curvature, spaces, and shapes for one to explore.The sculpted-like walls display not only the texture of the suit, but a macroscopic view of an enmourous wearable piece.  Acting as more than a prop, but a uncanny scenery.

Treated as a found object inside a virtual gallery exhibition, a scan of the teabags is displayed next to the teabags without texture. A juxtaposition of skin and without skin. Real still life to a non-real still life. Will we still consider the other teabag a teabag? Will a computer render it the same and call it one too? 

As you enter out of the suit, you will notice that this is no ordinary suit but one made out of the texture of the allusion of teabag covers. Is it a suit or teabag covers? This question pertains to the sculpture seen in person but now brought upon in virtual 3-dimensional space. Feel free to explore more of the digital concept of teabags and join the wedding ceremony. 

A repetition of a display of the texture of the suit. An ironically convenient assemblage to showcase parts of the suit in tiny bits and pieces. 

This is not my body but it also is. I live in this entity that encapsulates my stories and thoughts, where I am coming from, and where I am now. 

This body part merely feels like a body part. It could be male or female. Yet this scan of my body exists. It now exists as a growing mushroom next to a wedding. 

Representing a mushroom, an upside-down leg is more than it seems.