Ryan Li
Conservatorium High School
THE MAKING OF AN HONEST SELF PORTRAIT.
Collection of Work
Mixed media
The Making of an Honest Self-Portrait is dedicated to the deity Fate. My intention in my body of work was to examine the small part which I represent of Fate's universe-encompassing artwork and to convey how every human is meticulously forged by the people, objects and experiences Fate brings into their lives. I encourage the audience to use my work to reflect on how Fate has crafted each of them and to seek the ultimate purpose of their life in playing out Fate's great work.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Relation in Space; Salvador Dali, Soft Self Portrait with Grilled Bacon; Jessica O'Donnell, Biomorphic; Fritz Lang (dir.), Thea von Harbou (writer), Metropolis; FW Murnau (dir.), Henrik Galeen (writer), Nosferatu; Robert Wiene (dir.), Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer (writers), The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Benjamin Christensen (dir. and writer), Häxan; Cooper Tafe, Fragmented Self [ARTEXPRESS 2023].
Marker's Commentary
The Making of an Honest Self-Portrait brings together sculpture, painting, drawing and film to explore how a person is built from the people, objects and experiences life hands them. The three heads, inspired by Raoul Hausmann's Mechanical Head and raised on plinths, suggest that an individual grows out of the artform that shaped them, paintbrushes spilling from the painter nod to Dali, piano keys from the composer, and finally the student's own face suggesting it is the art and music we devote ourselves to that makes the thinker. The masks peeling from each face hint at an identity still being uncovered rather than fixed, while a shared love of music and art ties the figures together.
The same idea carries into the large black and white painting, where the carefully rendered saxophone player seems caught in the act of being made. The panel is deliberately damaged and bound back together, and in the Dada-inspired film, a figure in white drapery hammering a head on a plinth, another hurling themselves at the panel to leave each mark gives the work a real sense of the struggle behind its creation. The scrolls extend the piece well, their hand-drawn instruments, body parts and musical notes echoing the fragments that come together to form a person. Confident mark-making and a consistent black and white palette hold the collection together. This is an ambitious body of work that sustains one clear concept across several media, each part speaking to the same question: how fate, and everything it brings us, shapes who we become.