BACKGROUND

Following on from a previous piece of digital art work where I researched and experimented with Procreate and Adobe Fresco, I chose to use Adobe Fresco for this piece of work because I found using my MS Surface Pro with the MS Stylus worked well; it was an enjoyable way to create art that is new to me.

This is part of my narrative development work from memory, where I make work when thoughts or scenes come into mind. In this case, it was a childhood memory. The trigger for this memory came from researching into Homi K. Bhabha’s book, The Location of Culture, where he talked about ‘mimicry’. Bhabha asserts that the colonised people would try to mimic the behaviour and culture of the coloniser in order to be more accepted by those in authority. According to Bhabha, the coloniser wanted the colonised to mimic them because it was a form of imposing soft power making the colonised adopt the coloniser’s culture and habits as a higher standard. To reinforce the power structure, the coloniser would demonstrate their power by judging good and bad mimicry. The coloniser did not want the colonised to be great at mimicking because it was important to maintain a differentiation between the two to justify the act of colonising.

Understanding Bhabha’s explanation of ‘mimicry’ reminded me of an incident that happened in my childhood in Hong Kong on a bowling green… It was a case of bad mimicry and I got into trouble for it.

There was a pristine lawn bowling green in front of our apartment block where the British would bowl on sunny weekend afternoons. As local kids, we were not allowed to go onto the green – it was forbidden. However, it was too tempting so one day, my siblings and I (three of us) went to play on the lawn. We were soon shouted at by a white British man. We didn’t know what he was saying but he was clearly shouting for us to get off (shouting and waving his arms dismissively). Kids innocently playing on grass where they shouldn’t do was no big deal, it happened all the time everywhere in the world. But on this occasion, our father who worked for the British HK Government was angry when he heard about what we did. He wouldn’t usually get involved with discipline for us and certainly not for something so trivial, that side of parenting was left to our mother. But he personally told us off as soon as he was home from the office. The fact that he scolded us as soon as he got home meant that he was informed of the incident at work; the news somehow reached him through an official channel. Now in hindsight, I believe we made him look bad at work because we showed that his family were poor mimics, we didn’t respect the bowling green like good British people would. Our poor mimicry as kids must have undone the good mimicry work that my father was working so hard to portray at his work. We were bad kids and made him look bad in front of his superiors.

Researching into Bhabha’s idea on mimicry reminded me of that incident and I wanted to make a piece of work about it.

Finished work:

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METHOD

Adobe Fresco was used for this work. Below are images showing the layers that were created – some were imported images and others were painted or drawn using the software. The three little sparrows were metaphors for me and my siblings. There were always lots of small tree sparrows on our balcony when we were young and I like using that as a metaphor for me as a child in my narrative art work.

The base layer image was a scene I found online of the said bowling lawn dated back to WWII during the 1940s – the lawn in the image is mostly obscured by the Prison Officers’ Club house in the foreground. My father worked for the HK Crown Prison (Correctional) Service and the apartment block on the left was where we lived – it was called Block K. Out flat was on the middle floor on the left side of the block. Seeing the photo brought back so many memories of my childhood at Flat No. K3.

The base layer photo was found in this blog and the blog details some very interesting history about the area which was used as a POW camp during WWII and our Block K housed Dutch and Norwegian POWs.

http://battleforhongkong.blogspot.com/2016/12/december-2016-diary.html?m=1

REFLECTIONS

I have found Bhabha’s book, The Location of Culture, very insightful and I continue to enjoy using his theories to help me to make sense of my lived experiences as a transcultural person. This incident was an example of how this part of my learning worked.

I also enjoyed working with Adobe Fesco. I found the tool straight forward to use. I particularly like the fact that I can work on my phone on the go, then refine and build on my work when I’m at home with my Surface Pro. So I’ll continue to use Fesco as my go-to digital art tool.

Researching Bhabha’s theory of mimicry helped me to understand the incident and why my father was upset by what was a rather trivial act by his kids. A question I am asking myself is – how does doing narrative art work like this one help me? I do not have an answer yet but I want to note down this question as an ongoing enquiry.

LEARNING

Researching Bhabha’s work has inspired me to make work to develop my narrative. This is what I had hoped would happen so I’m happy with this progress and will continue this path of learning.

Adobe Fresco is a useful tool that I like, I should continue to explore its functionality.

I was unable to answer the question that I posed myself ‘How does my narrative work help me?’ – Why am I doing it? I need to give this more considered thoughts.

NEXT STEPS

– Keep going with research on The Location of Culture.

– Do another piece of work using Fresco, perhaps try the painting functions and not just drawing.

– Start to articulate my thoughts on how my narrative work helps me. I expect this to be a slow enquiry process…

UPDATE ON ENQUIRY

I have been thinking a lot about the above since posing those questions to myself ‘How does my narrative work help me?‘ and ‘Why am I doing it?’. In a recent Group Tutorial during our weekly MA online session, my group helped me to explore those questions. They also asked some additional useful questions, such as ‘Who am I doing it for?’ and ‘Has art ever solved any other problems for me?‘

Reflecting on the Group Tutorial, my latest thoughts are:

Firstly, ‘who am I doing it for?‘ My immediate answer was ‘for me, I am doing this for me’. 

Why am I doing it? My response was that the exploration helped me to understand more about myself, my behaviour and response to situations. 

How does my narrative work help me and has art ever solved any other problems for me? For this, my answer during the Group Tutorial was that art had never solved any problems for me but there have been cases where by exploring my narrative through my art practice, it had helped to crystalise or pinpoint a problem and brought better clarity. However, after the group discussion, I reflected further and felt that in fact on occasions, my art and practice research have helped me to find answers. Such as this case of the ‘bowling lawn incident’ – through my art making and research, I had a better insight into the colonial soft power structure that my father had to work in therefore giving me a better understanding of his environment and helped to explain some of his behaviour that impacted us all.  

Although I have made some progress, I am aware that these answers are still quite close to the surface and I want to take more time to continue this line of enquiry, hence it is still ongoing…