Underground

This is a 9-month project that I did for my GCE O-Level Art coursework. The idea of this work is about parents-children love. The final work is a cylindrical box with four segments arranged on top of each other. Below are the explanations of the main features:

Structures and Contents:

The 4 segments have 4 different colors: lime yellow/green, orange, brown and blue. Inspired by the colors of the 4 seasons, the 4 segments represent 4 stages of a person’s life from babyhood to elderliness. The watercolor painting inside each segment portrays the struggles of both the mother and the daughter throughout their lives.

At the bottom of the box, there is a broken heart made of glass of broken test tubes. This broken heart illustrates the complexity of the love between parents and children, or between the mother and her daughter particularly in this case.

The broken heart and the paintings are hidden inside the box because only by deep contemplation, one can realize the pain co-existing with the love between parents and children.

Choice of Materials:

The outer layer of the box is red and the whole box (including the segments) is covered by felt. These 2 elements will mislead the audience about the content of inside the box, as they will expect to see joyful things when they open it.

Felt is used also to imply that although the love between parents and children are usually tough love as both parties often misunderstand each other, this love is still warm and comforting.

My original idea was to create a glass toy with baby oil, food coloring and bleach. The movement of the liquid drops through the glass represents the transformation of the love between parents and children.

Experiments with food coloring, baby oil and bleach (at the bottom) to see the movement and color change of liquid drops through pieces of broken glass