CHRISTINA PHAN

S O L O  E X P O S I T I O N  ONE

J A N U A R Y  .  2 4  .  2 0 1 4

 

 

Literature Comprehension                 

—     A soul mate (or soulmate) is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity, shares the same values and tastes, and often forges a romantic bond. This may involve similarity, love, intimacy, sexuality, sexual activity, spirituality, or compatibility and trust.

 

The Artist’s Personal Comprehension

—     “Soulmate is a person with whom one goes through a process of unification by having a deep interrelationship between them. It may start from having similarities in the way they think or seeing many things from the same perspective. Hence, the process of becoming a soulmate may be established because it begins with a sense of closeness or familiarity with one another. It is often found among family, friends, as well as among couples. Therefore, a person may have many soulmates in life simultaneously in that same period of time, and it does not always happen in romantic relationships. Being alike or having similarities in many things between two people also may not immediately connote being soulmates. A deep interrelationship is built from a learning process that occurs continuously within selves and between them, and over the course of time, without realizing it, they become one or complete one another. And that is when they can be considered soulmates.”

 

Background

—     Many discussions and research about soulmates found many similarities or resemblance between couples reflected in their physical features, body gestures, even in the way they speak. A very strong bond that happens between a couple causes their body cells to automatically change and resemble one another. It is also a common perception that couples with similar faces may be destined to be together or considered soulmates.                                                                                                                                      

                               

The Artist’s fascination in facial symmetry, harmonious proportions and accuracy yielded her focus to dig deeper in couples that could be considered soulmates, as specifically reflected in their facial resemblance. Then came a project idea, entitled "One", that aims to study and, at the same time, document facial similarities or affinities from couples from all walks of life in relation to the theories of soulmates.

 

Exposition Concept

—     Based on the literature and the Artist’s personal comprehension about the meaning of "Soulmates", the concept presented this time is a series of photographs that combine or unite two faces from a wide array of couples, pursed to the ones that are bound in marriage and differentiated by the marriage time period.

                       

Using a Canon 5D Mark II with a 50 mm f/1.4 USM lens and 2 Profotos lighting, the Artist put together half of each couple’s face side by side in natural tones or original color photo result. The aim is for the resemblance to be seen directly between their facial features. Or maybe it’s the contrary, in which case it’s the difference that shows.

 

The decision to put the men’s face on the right side and the women’s on the left side in the composite layout is derived from the Artist’s common knowledge, which comes from her family and surroundings’ custom of mannerism, in which to position a man to come in first as the head of the family – the symbol that represents a masculine figure. Then a woman, as the companion to comes afterward – the symbol of a feminine figure. In addition, the Artist has also done an experiment on her own face by doing a composite of the two right sides of her face. As the result, the face as a whole looks more masculine than her original face. This also works the other way around, where the composite of the two left sides of her face results in a more feminine face. Thus, regardless of history and civilization, as well as scientific and religious points of view, saying that a man should be positioned on the right side and the woman should be on the left side or vice versa, the applied composition of the work’s composite is based on the Artist’s personal assessment, which is to position the masculine figure on the right side and the feminine figure on the left side.

 

In the series of 26 selected photographs for this exposition, the Artist’s objective is to show the presence of harmonious proportion by uniting two facial features from each couple, which may reflect that each couple is indeed (unlikely) to be soulmates or (not) destined to be together in the presence of a romantic bond within their relationship.

 

 

 

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