AI CHUN HUANG: My Baby and I
Proposal: This art project is an interactive suitcase on the website, which contains a lot of short animations. When you open the suitcase and click those objects, you will trigger some meaningful moment clips. This animation is about a mother’s life journey, and it tells my female role transition to be a mother, and I collected from my life moments with my kids. It contained valuable and poetic moments, like wedding photos on the wall, my baby moving with heart-beating in the womb, a time tunnel showing women’s different roles from newborn baby to mother, grandma, and to death…..etc. It is my story, and it is also you and your mom’s story.
Bio: I am a multimedia artist, specializing in experimental animations, painting, digital installation, or any inspirational resources wherever and whenever on my hands. I have done a few animation short films since 2018, such as “Holy Mountain ”, “the Crowded Dreams” , and “the Manipulation of Life”. My artworks focus on life limitations and social expectations from an Asian immigrant woman’s perspective and use metaphors from my Asian cultural icons. I use art to transform those scenery in my journey into poetic pictures, and also combine with my life growth context into my artworks. I’m interested in collecting meaningful life moments images, videos and audios into my experimental animations. I chose ” video poem” to record my life scenarios, from micro to macro perspective, therefore. I do digital animations from my hand-drawings, or use collage skills to put my metaphors into the story. As an Asian immigrant in the USA, my animation creates poetic metaphor and descriptive context with contemporary cultural images of Asian families, especially interpretation of the female role in this society.
These years, I experienced” being a mother” and “moving to the USA as an immigrant“ and “building my own family ”. I’m confused about the meaning of “home” because I am away from home and trying to pursue my new ideal life in the USA. Wandering between home and other far destinations, I try to find my own definition of belonging and dreams. My art tells a time-and-space-limited story and still positively dreams of the ideal home and family.
Besides, I am also a mother with a 4-year-old baby daughter, and she became my art inspiration and really joined my art making process a lot. She usually paints and draws with me, and we inspire each other during our art making process. Two years ago, I tried to use her creative drawings into my animations and artworks. Therefore, my important family members naturally and inevitably join my art project.
I am interested in collecting meaningful life moments images, videos and audios to put into my experimental animations. And those materials lead to my perspective of “home & dream“. These years, I experienced” being a mother” and “moving to the USA as an immigrant“ and building my own home with my husband and daughter ”. I am confused about the meaning of “home” because I am away from my hometown- Taiwan and trying to pursue my new ideal life in the USA. Wandering between home and other far-away destinations, I try to find my own definition of belonging and dreams. And I use what I collect in my daily life, to create my own perspective and metaphor to find the way home.
I had exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including those at the CICA museum in South Korea, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, C-LAB(Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab) and Pier-2 art center in Taiwan, Nan Jing University art gallery in China, Cornish college of arts, Lewis & Clark college art gallery in USA…….etc. Her outdoor installation presented at National Taichung Theater in Taiwan, and her animations “The Holy Mountain” got the first prize internationally in Jing Shan Classic, Cultural & Creative Arts Award, and the most recent animation ”Nomad Chaos” was selected in Shoreline short short film festival in USA.
I currently work as the art director for my own art & design studio ”Little Hope Creative Studio” in Seattle, and working on multi-media artwork projects, animations, and visual design. I am also a mother with two kids, and get lots of art inspirations from my kids. As a nomad artist roaming around the world, I will keep recording her life journey through her artistic eyes, and looking back at what I came from, and where I am standing now.