GARDEN 3
2020, Sculpture: UV Print on acrylic, 80cm x 60cm x 20cm
‘Garden 3’ emulates the form of the lotus and lily pad as an embodiment of this ubiquitous and highly commodified symbol for ‘Asian-ness’. It uses this form to represent the objectification and exoticisation of the female Asiatic body, translating it into a smooth, glossy and hyper perfect object. The Perspex surface is at once the skin of the body and the glass of the screen as nod towards techno-orientalism and the uneasy synergy between the cyborgian and orientalist descriptions of Asian bodies.
As a further response to the prevalence of techno-orientalism in many contemporary visions of the future and of technology the work uses photogrammetric scanning to capture textures of plants and flowers which are printed onto the Perspex sculptures. In doing so the raw energy and complexity of the botanics are digitised, simplified, and flattened, representing the limiting nature of objectification.
The curling Perspex floats atop winding acrylic stems demonstrating that beneath the overt layers of apparent beauty and so-called positive discrimination that there is a precarity and uneasiness in the act of objectification.