Curated Projects
VIVIAN HO Artist’s statement by Vivian Ho HAVING GROWN UP IN HONG KONG, ARTIST AND WESLEYAN STUDENT VIVIAN HO EXPLORES THE MARKETS OF HER HOME CITY THROUGH A SERIES OR COLORFUL AND VIBRANT PORTRAITS.
But I found these objects and their way of death beautiful. They might look silent but they are not. I try to include their eyes in my paintings to show the seemingly thoughtful side of the corpses.
Where I grew up, meat is not sold in a grocery store, but in an open market, still vividly bloody and loud and messy. Animals are killed in front of the consumers for maximum freshness. One moment you point at this fish swimming in the tank and decide to have it for dinner, the next moment it is on the chopping board, beheaded, getting its scales removed.
It was painful for me to watch, painful for them to die. Yet, their death is so beautiful. If everyone is going to overlook it, I want to capture it in its most poetic way: the moment of the loss of life for our consumption. Freshness of flesh. Freshness of death.
It all happens within seconds. Very neat. You can still see the heart pumping, the body breathing.�
These unwanted parts, these guts and blood, were once what they are all made of. Mingled together. Forced separation of their bodies. Robbed of their own identity. *
The swimming fish in the tank is all body parts, all priced accordingly, awaiting to be consumed in different ways. The dead animals are often just dismissed as dirty, need to be cleaned up and washed.
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