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Breast-obsessed artist creates fluffy pink ‘Boobroom’
05.12.2017
01:33 pm
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Boobroom, 2017
 
Much of Weijue Wang’s art is fluffy and pink and displays a strong emphasis on the mammaries of the female human, but underneath her seemingly fun and bouncy subject matter is a very dark subtext. Very dark.

Wang’s work was showcased at StARTup Art Fair in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Here is the statement of purpose Wang submitted for the event, which was rather striking:
 

As an emerging Chinese female artist who lives in an age of consumerism in China, I am bombarded with the commodification of everything in every aspect of my daily life. I am interested especially in the commodification of the female bodies. Contemporary women are freer to think and act. With enhanced freedom, however, some threat their self-esteem by seeking painful cosmetic surgeries to modify their appearances. In the name of beauty, some women commoditize their bodies to fit into the sexualized beauty norms. These soft and fluffy female private part jewelries and sculptures are born in my needle’s sharp penetration through the felt. Underneath their harmless domesticity, I want to unveil the profound violence and irony in female commodification and mass-produced beauty. By showing my works in a hotel room setting, the sexual and domestic feeling of my works will be enhanced. Basically, I will create a room of fetish of female body parts. Some pieces will be lying on the bed (like the Airport Dream II ), while the sound that will be coming out of the piece will allow the audience to expand their imagination.

 
As you can see, Wang views her work, which would include a “room of fetish of female body parts,” as directly confronting the consumer culture that has arisen in China, which brings along with it inordinate stress and concern over the appearance of females. Wang has noticed that women in China are increasingly turning to breast enhancement, which in her eyes is equivalent to self-mutilation.
 

Process, 2017
 
In Kelsey Lannin’s article at Creators, she gestured at the two enormous “breasts” propped up on her pink bed and said, “I have huge boobs now! They might look cute and fluffy but they are borne out of violence. Of a needle penetrating through the felt.”

A work of hers called “Airport Dream” consists in part of round pink balls (yes, with “nipples”) suspended on pieces of string. The title is a reference to the fact that in China, the word airport is a common insult directed at flat-chested women!

“I definitely want to expand on it,” Wang told Lannin. “There are still a lot of women being called ‘airport’ in China.”
 

Boobroom, 2017
 

Airport Dream, 2017
 
via Creators
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.12.2017
01:33 pm
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