ASIAN
ART This Used to Be m y Playground
‘This Used to Be My Playground’ opened on 25 April 1998 at the Museum o f Ethnology in Rotterdam. The exhibition is a personal photo document, created during 1995-1996 by the photographer Yuk-Lin Tang (Amsterdam, 1968). She depicts the mingling o f Chinese and Dutch culture, as manifested in the everyday life o f her three nieces living in the Netherlands.
The photos show the reactions of the young girls to some Chinese events, but likewise to Dutch tradi tions and scenery, like a day at the beach and visiting windmills in the countryside. Yuk-Lin Tang finds it very interesting to see how her niec es are growing up in Dutch society. Observing how they have identified themselves with the Western world and incorporated the unfamiliar as pects to their own culture. Yuk-Lin Tang tells the story by photograph ing the reactions of the girls to events, the surroundings, and ritu als. She identifies herself with the situation in which the girls’ mother introduces Western customs, such as the Christmas tree, especially for the children. Also familiar to her is the teenagers’ reaction when they see a nude painting during their first visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Their uncertainty gradually disap pears when they accept the phenom enon totally, which they are not ac customed to doing. Although these reactions are ex tremely familiar to Tang, they also pose questions: about her own youth and about the known and unknown for those growing up between two cultures. This exhibition is the ar tist's reaction to the events and sur roundings that moulded her into the artist that she has become.
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By ILSE CHIN
ccording to the Dutch political journal Elsevier, Yuk-Lin Tang is one of the most promising photographers in Hol land at the moment. Last April YukLin Tang opened two solo-exhibi tions: ‘This Used to Be My Playg round’ at the Museum of Ethnology in Rotterdam and ‘Open Your Heart’ at the Torch Gallery in Amsterdam (which closed 23 May 1998). She was born in Amsterdam, but the family moved to Hong Kong be cause her father wanted her to have a Chinese upbringing. They lived there until she was fourteen and then moved back to Holland. She is very proud of her Chinese back ground, but also feels Dutch. The fu sion between Eastern and Western ideas and values is one of the main topics in her works. It is also an im portant part of her photographic search for herself Yuk-Lin Tang studied photogra phy at the Rietveld Academy in Am sterdam, graduating in 1994. She could easily express herself with the camera and capture her stories di rectly on film. She immediately drew attention with her personal document about young Chinese women and sexuali
The Innocence in the Work Yuk-Lin Tang ty. It won her the KBW Stockbank Prize in 1995. In a short time she has received wide recognition of her work. Her graduation work was pre sented in Art Amsterdam ’95 and she participated twice in the Photofesti val Naarden (1995 and 1997), where she had one of the best presenta tions.
H ong Kon^ After completing her study she visited Hong Kong and Tokyo and stayed there for six months. She had
not been there for almost ten years. Equipped with her camera she went on a search for her origin, her identi ty. ‘At that time that world was very interesting to me; it’s a different world, but on the other hand also very familiar’. Her time in Hong Kong is deeply rooted in her. By making a combination of Eastern and Western values she was able to create an identity of her own.
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Innocence After her return to Holland, she took her work to another level and constructed her photos with setcompositions. She began to portray the female characters in their purest form: nude. ‘My nudes dwell on in nocence. Innocence is the beginning of all process, a curiosity to find something else. My nudes are proud of themselves, of their body; they stand firm and balanced in front of my camera. That’s why I try to take the shame away, to free them of the taboo. In that way it’s easier to make contact with the outside world’. The radiation of blonde serenity that characterizes her composed work is intensified by the technique she applies. She uses flashlight and at the end covers the print with frosted spray. The result is a certain softness that has a very powerful and unique effect.
Influence Ifyou ask Yuk-Lin Tang which art ist is her inspiration, she immediate ly says Nobuyoshi Araki. Nowadays
Yuk-Lin Tang, 1996. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. From the series ‘This Used to be my Playground’.
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Yuk-linTang, 199b. Hongkong N.T. From the series ‘This Used to be my Playground’
the work of this Japanese photogra pher consists mainly of snapshots of women. ‘The women in his work are free, he liberates them. That’s the one thing that I like about his pic tures. I try to do that in my own way with my nudes. The difference is that my work is softer and more sub tle’.
Childhood memories In focusing on the photo document that Yuk-Lin Tang created ‘This Used to Be My Playground’ seeks to retrieve a piece of childhood memories that she had imagined was lost. For one year she followed her young nieces during their everyday lives in Zaan dam and their first experiences of Hong Kong. The lives of the young Chinese girls have much in common with her own story: born in Amster dam but often returning to Hong Kong. The 40 photographs form a re construction of her childhood memo ries. This is her story, but she also wants it to be recognizable to other people.
Open Your Heart The exhibition ‘Open Your Heart’ at the Torch Gallery in Amsterdam, dealt with a completely different story to ‘This Used to Be My Playg round’. Yuk-Lin travelled to Thai land to photograph young girls. In her position as photographer she does not criticize the prostitution in Thailand, but she portrays the young women involved out of their working environment in their regu lar daily activities. Their story, told by mainly snapshots, is not so very different from that of other young girls. ■
Until 4 October 1998.
‘This Used to Be My Playground’
MUSEUM OF ETHNOLOGY Willemskade 25 3016 DM Rotterdam The Netherlands Tel. +31-10 -41 122 01.
Summer 1998 •
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