On Binaries
Binariesare social constructs composed of two parts that are framed as absolute and unchanging opposites. Binary systems reflect the integration of these oppositional ideas into our culture. This results in an exaggeration of differences between social groups until they seem to have nothing in common.
My understanding of binaries is a personal one that is deeply intertwined with my father.
There is no doubt that my father loves my mother. My aunties would often recount their courting days, when they were caught dating in secret by my fourth uncle married to my mum’s sister, who had a knack for catching his sister-in-laws dating without my grandmother’s permission. Their courtship was briefly halted when my mother was diagnosed with Hepatitis B, which in the 70s in China marked her as basically disabled from society. So she ended the relationship telling my father to find another who was not a Hep B carrier. My father, undeterred by her diagnosis, would be the first one in at visiting times and the last one out. When they married, my father was the favourite out of my uncles who married my mother’s sisters (seven siblings all girls). My cousin recalled that he would bring back foreign goodies from his work trips abroad, as a marine engineer, he had the luxury of travelling to foreign lands for 6 months per year. So her first taste of Coca Cola was through my father. He brought a Japanese washing machine for my grandmother and would cycle to the far ends of Shanghai to purchase a gold bracelet for my mother.
When I was born, I disappointed my mother’s family because I didn't inherit the milky skin of my mother, the hallmark of a Shanghainese woman. Instead, I inherited my father’s dark skin, thankfully my eyes belonged to my mother’s side. However, my father didn’t care. I was too young to recall that I would sit on my father’s shoulders while we climbed Yellow Mountain - I was very much a daddy’s girl.
However, the father that I loved and knew changed over time. Over the pressures of being an immigrant in the UK, the changing environment, my father changed. And what he prized in my mother became a pressure and punishment. Such insecurities accumulated slowly and turned slowly into control into something more.
I could not fathom that my father was both. And in the early days of Facebook, I stumbled across a mothers’ group whose children were diagnosed psychopaths. Their experiences of navigating the inner monster inside of their own child was heartbreaking - the mothers who placed their children in psychiatric wards.
Through this personal experience and the mothers’ group, I began to understand that humanity and the world as complex and multilayered. It is not the binary systems continuously reinforced by algorithms built on yes/no logic that aggregate an us/them perception, divided by difference.
Humanity cannot be coded that way.
We are much more than singular identities.
Binaries coexist both in all of us as humans. Through my seven years in corporate consultancy, I have witnessed c-suites as simultaneously leaders and gentle fathers or mothers to their children. We are humans first and foremost, we all experience the 酸甜苦辣 (Suāntiánkǔlà) sour sweet bitter spicy - the various flavours of life. It is these commonalities that widen our perception to understand multiple angles rather than the absolute singular.
My art work is the exploration of binaries coexisting harmoniously, the multifaceted and complexity of humans and life. Softness coexisting with strength, fast coexisting with slow, western philosophy coexisting with eastern philosophy. Redefining the binary system as an interconnected spectrum of colours - each playing a role within the painting and neither one is whole without the other.
As for my father, I leave you with this ‘we have all loved someone who disappointed/ harmed us. We have all been someone who disappointed/ harmed someone else.'