All posts by allen

Sticky Situations 你爷爷的路

March 27, 2019 2019年3月27日

Occasionally censorship and draconian punishment can backfire and work in an artist’s favor. That’s certainly the case for Singapore’s Samantha Lo, otherwise known as SKL0, who went from facing jail time for her lighthearted street art to touring the world for gallery shows and mural commissions.

SKL0 never expected to become an artist. Before the whole uproar, she had studied food science and didn’t know what she wanted out of life. Street art caught her attention in 2008 when she started a blog about art in Singapore called RCGNTN. At first, she didn’t plan on joining the ranks of those she covered, but after a little while, she started slapping stickers around Haji Lane (a popular spot with the young crowd) to promote her website. That eventually evolved into stickers with humorous one-liners and observations about life in Singapore.

有些时候，艺术家如果遭受了“审查”和惩罚，反而更可能会让他们因祸得福。就像新加坡艺术家 Samantha Lo 的经历正是如此。她以 SKL0 的名字为人熟知，曾经因为自己出于好玩创作的街头艺术而面临牢狱之灾，也因此获得在世界各地的画廊巡回展览和壁画创作邀请的机会。

SKL0 从未想过会成为一名艺术家。在一切变得沸沸扬扬之前，她就读食品科学专业，还不知道自己到底想要怎么样的生活。2008 年，她开启了一个有关新加坡艺术的博客 RCGNTN，并从那时起开始关注街头艺术。起初，她并没有打算加入这些她所报导的艺术家行列，但没过多久，她开始在当地的哈芝巷（Haji Lane，青年文化的集中地）四处张贴贴纸，以宣传自己的博客。后来，她又在这些贴纸上添加了关于新加坡生活的一些有趣见解。

The stickers went viral and got her some attention, but it wasn’t until she stenciled the words “My Grandfather Road” on the ground in 2012 that her life changed. The phrase itself is just a play on the local saying “your grandfather’s road,” which is commonly used to tell off other drivers. Yet it sparked an investigation that led to an arrest, international media attention, and ultimately a brand new career.

这些贴纸后来被网友疯传，她因此获得了一些关注。直到 2012 年，因为那一句印在地上的“我爷爷的路”（My Grandfather Road），她的生活迎来了巨大的转折点。这句话本身只是从“你爷爷的路”衍化而来，当地人用来惩戒其他司机的一种说法。然而，这句话招致政府部门对她的调查，之后的逮捕，来自国际媒体的关注，以及最终让她走上了新的职业生涯。

“I was at home, upstairs in my room playing Grand Theft Auto, when my mom called from downstairs. I thought she wanted me to do some chores,” SKL0 recalls with a laugh. “I went down and saw six officers standing in our living room.” The police searched her room in their three-story home on the outskirts of the city and found all the evidence they needed to book her. “I spent about 22 hours at the station, but they were very nice about it. They said they liked my work and apologized for handcuffing me.”

She was charged with mischief and faced up to two years in jail for a couple of stencils spray-painted on the pavement. But people were outraged that someone was facing prison time for harmless works of art.

“我当时正呆在家里，在房间里玩《侠盗猎车手》（Grand Theft Auto）。我妈妈在楼下喊我，我还以为她要我帮忙做家务。” SKL0 笑着回忆道。“我下楼，看见六名警察站在我家的客厅。”这是幢郊区小三层房子，警察们搜遍了她的房间，找到所有足以带她走的相关证据。“我在警察局待了大概 22 个小时，但他们对我挺好的。他们说很喜欢我的作品，还为了给我带手铐而道歉。”

因为在人行道上喷了几个约两米宽的涂鸦，她被指控刑事恶作剧罪，而面临长达两年的监禁。仅仅因为喷涂了几面墙就要入狱，当地民众对这样的宣判感到十分愤怒。

Before SKL0, street art in Singapore was generally relegated to alleyways and hidden spaces, but now the public was confronted with how the law impacted creative expression. Foreign vandals have been dealt harsher penalties for less defensible actions. But this case made waves because it involved a young, local artist who was seemingly caught in the system for making people smile. “It was such a high profile case that a lot of lawyers approached me on a pro bono basis,” SKL0 says. “It was so crazy, I was in the media for like a week. Established brands were even cashing in on my designs by selling them.” People surged to her defense and filed a petition with some 15,000 signatures protesting her punishment. A minister even asked for her sentence to be reduced.

在 SKL0 出现之前，新加坡的街头艺术通常都只能在隐密小巷或遮蔽的空间里进行。 而现在，公众开始思考法律如何影响创意表达的问题。有一些蓄意破坏公共财产的外国人，会因为这些“无正当理由的罪行”而受到严厉惩罚。但 SKL0 的案件反映的是一名当地青年因为一些幽默创作而被政府逮捕。“我的案件获得了很多关注，有很多律师找到我要为我无偿服务。” SKL0 说，“真是太疯狂了，我在媒体上被报道了将近一个星期。甚至还有品牌用我的设计来卖产品。”支持她的声浪不断涌入，人们提交了请愿书以期政府减轻对她的惩罚，最后一共获得了约 15000 份签名。甚至有某名部长为她出面以求减刑。

Ultimately, a year after her initial arrest, she was sentenced to just 240 hours of community service and fined $4,000 SGD, which she paid partly by selling T-shirts and collecting donations. “The rest I paid off with the commission opportunities I got after the case,” she says with a triumphant smile.

Opportunities came flowing in. The only problem was that SKL0 didn’t really consider herself an artist due to her minimal experience. She ended up spending an entire year learning new techniques, hoping to not be pigeonholed into the stickers and stencils that made her famous. Her artistic growth is evident in her body of work, which has expanded into sculptures, murals, and more. She’s shown a talent for using visual languages that viewers are familiar with in order to ask new questions.

Today, about a third of her works are funded by the government, and she works full-time as an artist. Her unlikely trajectory to success proves that sometimes what may seem like a stroke of bad luck can actually be a blessing in disguise.

在被逮捕一年后，最终她被判处 240 小时的社区服务和罚款 4000 新币。她靠卖 T 恤和募集捐款支付了部分罚款。“这次事件之后，我获得了很多工作邀请，我用赚的钱支付了其余罚款。”她带着胜利的笑容说道。

在这之后，也就是她还没把自己当成艺术家的时候，她的工作机会就接踵而至了。于是，她花了一年时间学习新的创作技术，以避免自己的创作被局限于让她“闻名遐迩”的贴纸和涂鸦作品。她的作品涉猎面日益扩大，现在也有雕塑和墙绘之类更多的创作。她会通过观众所熟悉视觉语言，提出新的问题。

现在，她的作品大约有三分之一由政府资助，她也完全可靠艺术来谋生。有时候，真的是塞翁失马，焉知非福啊。

Instagram: @skl0_

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

 

 

Instagram: @skl0_

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

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Enigmatic Eyes 你看起来很伤心

March 13, 2019 2019年3月13日

At an exhibition in Columbus, Ohio, a group of wide-eyed elementary students gather around a series of enigmatic sculpted faces argue. “That one looks like it’s sad,” says one of them. “No, it looks like it’s doing this!” another yells back, making a face. They continue to disagree, laughing at each other and defending their perspectives.

Gunyoung Kim, the artist behind the sculptures, is originally from Seoul and moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies in ceramic art. She has held residencies in Kansas and Montana, and currently lives and teaches in Ohio. She says she wants to “make art accessible to everyone”—a goal that, at first glance, seems at odds with her surrealist figures. But for her, making her art accessible doesn’t mean presenting a single, obvious meaning, but leaving it open to multiple interpretations. “I want viewers to have their own responses to my work,” she says.

在美国俄亥俄州哥伦布市的一个展览中，一群小学生正睁大眼睛，围看一组神秘的雕塑面孔，热烈地争论着。“这一个看起来很伤心。”一个小学生说道。“不，它看起来是这样的！”另一个边嚷着，边模仿雕塑做鬼脸。他们继续辩论，各抒己见，为各自不同的观点而开怀大笑。

这些雕塑的创作者 Gunyoung Kim 是一名来自韩国首尔的艺术家。她曾在美国攻读陶瓷艺术的研究生学位，并先后在堪萨斯州和蒙大拿州生活过，目前则在俄亥俄州担任教师工作。她说自己想“让所有人都能理解艺术”——乍听之下，这个目标似乎与她的超现实主义作品自相矛盾。但对于她来说，让人们理解艺术，并不意味着必须呈现单一、意义明显的作品，而是开放地让人们对于作品解读出自己的意见。“我希望观众对我的作品能有他们自己的理解。”她说。

Kim is an astute observer of expressions. “I was always interested in faces,” she says, “I don’t know why, but even when I made functional ceramics, I often drew or cast faces on them.” Part of the reason may lie in just how easy she is to talk to. Her comfort with other people allows her to make intimate observations. For the final exhibition of her undergraduate studies, she was inspired by the special needs children she’d worked with through her church for seven years. “Their faces were always difficult to read,” she recalls.“sometimes they were full of curiosity, or just really cute. It was hard to tell what they were thinking about.”

Gunyoung 是一位敏锐的表情观察者。她说：“我一直对人的面孔特别感兴趣，我也说不上为什么。即使是做功能性的陶器，我也常常会加上面孔的元素。”也许，她平易近人的性格是一部分原因。她总能让和她在一起的人感到特别舒服，这给予了她机会近距离去观察别人。在她就读本科时的最后一个展览中，她以自己在教会工作七年期间，遇到的特殊儿童作为创作灵感。她回忆说：“他们的表情很难看懂。有时候他们看上去充满了好奇，有时候只是单纯很可爱。很难猜测他们到底在想什么。”

Kim’s sculptures are inspired by faces she sees, but they’re not likenesses of anyone specific. It’s never her intention to replicate a particular face, and her medium lends itself to her art: “The really fun part about clay is that it’s super soft, so you can easily manipulate it. I never like making the exact same expression, and because there are many stages to the process I can add details or make changes as I go.” And unlike drawing, sculpting requires making a structure—shaping the head, pushing in the eye sockets, placing the eyes, etc.—which adds both variation and limitation, depending on the material used.

Gunyoung 的雕塑灵感来自于她所看到的面孔，但它们并不会类似于任何特定人物。她从来没有打算复制一张特定的脸，她的艺术完全延伸自媒介：“粘土真正有趣的部分在于它非常柔软，所以你可以很容易地操控它。我从来不喜欢制作相同的表情。在形塑的过程中有许多阶段，我可以随时添加细节或进行修改。与绘图不同，雕刻需要制作一个立体的结构——塑造头部、推入眼窝、放置眼睛等等——这增加了变化性，当然还有限制。

Given Kim’s gregarious nature, it’s hard to imagine her robbed of her voice. But when she first moved across the world to the US, she found herself struggling to overcome the language barrier. “I started thinking about my own emotions, because I couldn’t express myself. I started asking myself fundamental questions like why I was here, what I was doing or even who I was. During that time I really started to focus on my own voice.”

That voice, it turned out, had a lot to say about human relationships and emotions. “Humans are made to interact with each other,” she says. “At the time, I really started to notice how my relationships with other people impacted my emotions.” When asked about what she’s learned about human emotions through her art so far, she says, “Our feelings are always shifting and changing, and this reveals how unstable and vulnerable we are. One of the main ideas for my work is the way the complexity and ambiguity of our emotions comes from our imperfections.”

有着如此容易相处的性格，很难想象 Gunyoung 曾经失去自己的声音。当她最初移居到美国时，她曾有过语言障碍的经历。“我开始思考自己的一些情绪，因为我无法向外表达自己。我开始问自己为什么要到这里？我到底在做什么？甚至是我到底是谁？这些本质性的问题。那段时间我真的特别注意我自己的声音。”

而那个“声音”，其实与人际关系和情感是密切相关的。“人类天生必须与其他人互动。”她说。“那时候我开始关注我与其他人的关系会如何影响我的情绪。”当被问及她至今通过自己的艺术，对人的情感有什么理解时，她回应：“我们的情感一直在变化，这揭示了我们有多么不稳定和脆弱。我的作品的主要理念之一，即是人类情感的复杂性和模糊不定，来自于我们的不完美。”

Though Kim is now fluent in English and teaches workshops, she continues to study the faces around her by taking photographs. Her work is inspired by people from her personal life, and she snaps candid photos of them when they aren’t looking—not to copy these faces, but to observe details. Before sketching a sculpture, she sometimes starts by looking through her photographs. “I think I’m interacting with the photo, collecting my memories and experiences with other people. It’s part of the process.” One strange part of this, she observes, is that she finds it much more difficult to use photos of strangers. Why this is so, she isn’t sure: “It’s just a little different . . .  maybe I need a connection with the person to get more information about their expressions.”

即使 Gunyoung 现在能说流利的英语，并且在工作坊担任讲师，但她仍然继续通过拍照来观察她周围的面孔。她的作品都是以她身边的人作为启发的创作，她会趁他们不注意时偷拍下照片，不是为了复制这些面孔，而是要更仔细观察他们的面部细节。在给雕塑画草图之前，她有时会先翻看这些照片。“我觉得我像是在跟自己拍的照片互动，收集那些有关人们的回忆和经历。这是创作过程的一部分。”她还发现了一个奇怪的问题：如果使用陌生人的照片，创作会变得困难得多。为什么会这样呢，她也不确定：“反正就是不太一样……也许是因为本身就认识的人，我就握有更多信息去解读他们的表情。”

Kim’s balance of the realistic and the surreal owes a lot to her artistic influences. She says she’s inspired by painters like René Magritte and Hieronymus Bosch, whose works are visionary but not abstract. “You can still see the figure and the object,” she says. This is one of the reasons she focuses on human faces: “It’s the easiest thing to understand and the most familiar form.”

In fact, she’s tried her hand at purely abstract pieces. “I appreciate abstract art and tried to make it once, but I found I couldn’t.” She recalls that as she tried to smooth and refine her work, it became more and more figurative. She naturally makes work that’s more recognizable to others. “It’s just something and enjoy, and that might just be who I am,” she says with a smile.

Gunyoung 作品中现实与超现实元素的平衡，很大程度上要归功于她的艺术影响。比利时画家马格利特（René Magritte）和耶罗尼米斯·博斯（Hieronymus Bosch）那些前卫而非抽象式的作品启发了她。“你仍然可以看到物体的轮廓和外形。”她说道，这也是她专注于创作人脸的原因之一。“（人脸）是最容易理解、也是人们最熟悉的一种形式。”

事实上，她尝试过创作纯抽象作品。“我很欣赏抽象艺术，也试过创作这类作品。但我发现自己做不到。”她回忆道，当她试图润饰、完善自己的作品时，作品往往会变得越来越可辨认。她在创作时总是不自觉地倾向具象化。“我还是比较享受创作这样的作品，可能我就是这样子吧。”她笑着说道。

More recently, Kim has expanded her art to include animals and address issues of gender and religion. She says she started making animals when she worked in a studio set in Montana’s stunning natural scenery. “I saw bunnies and deer everyday, and I found the animals really funny because they behaved like humans sometimes.” She chooses animals that are frequently prey because she sees them as more similar to humans, allowing them to easily personify human emotions.

Kim’s newfound interest in animals developed into her newest project, “My Burden.” This complex series, featuring rabbits, sheep, and humans, encapsulates her growth as an artist. What began with the ambiguity of facial expressions has matured into an intersection of larger ideas, such as femininity and spirituality. The highlight of the series is a piece showing intricate flowers strewn across a sheep’s back, at once beautiful and fragile. Asked about their significance, Kim says she was inspired by her Christian faith, which emphasizes beauty in pain. For her, this duality is part of a more universal human experience. “Hardship and pain never go away, but remain a part of us—they somehow harden and become beautiful.”

最近，Gunyoung 扩大了自己的创作范畴，开始创作有关动物、性别和宗教主题的作品。她说，自从在蒙大拿州一个风景迷人的工作室里工作后，她就开始创作动物题材。“每天我都可以看到兔子和小鹿，我发现这些动物真的很有趣，因为他们有时候表现得简直跟人类一样。”她选择一般都是猎物角色的动物当作题材，因为在她看来这些动物更类似于人类，也更容易传达人类的情感。

对动物的新兴趣启发她创作新的项目《我的负担》（My Burden）。这个复杂的系列作品包括兔子、羊和人类，也体现出她作为艺术家的成长，从最初描绘带有不确定性的面部表情，发展成更宏大想法的展现，如女性特质和精神性。在这个系列作品中，最引人注意的是一幅羊背上散落花朵的作品，看上去既美丽又脆弱。当被问及作品的含义时，Gunyoung 说，这个作品是以她的基督教信仰为灵感创作的，这种信仰强调了痛苦之美。对她来说，这种双重性是一个更普遍的人类经验。“忧患与痛苦永远不会消失，永远是我们的一部分——它们会随着年岁逐渐坚固，变得迷人。”

Flowers bring to light another dimension of Kim’s work. She’s amused by the way people frequently associate the delicacy of flowers with femininity, because in working with them, she’s realized flowers are also “heavy, rough, sharp and brittle.”

Gender is of little concern in molding her figures, she says. “Some people think that because my figures have a certain kind of hair that it’s a man or a woman, but I don’t really pay attention to that while making them.” As Kim continues to develop as an artist, the ambiguities of her work will no doubt grow ever deeper and more dense. The children who enjoyed her work might one day return to find much more debate than just faces.

花卉让她的作品提升了一个新的维度。她说，人们常常将花的柔弱与女性联想在一起，这其实是很可笑的。因为她在创作时发现，事实上，这些花其实“沉重、粗犷、锋利又冷淡”。

她在创作人物雕塑时其实很少会关注性别，她说：“有些人认为，因为我的雕塑有某种发型，那它就是男人或是女人，但我在创作时真的没有在考虑这一点。”作为一个艺术家，Gunyoung 仍在不断进步，她的作品中的不确定性也将变得更有深度，更加强烈。而今天这些围观她雕塑作品的孩子也许会在长大后的某一天重新审视她的作品，发现除了雕塑的表情外，还有更多值得争论的事情。

Website: gunyoungkim.com
Instagram: @ggunyoung9

 

Contributor: Eugene Lee
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

网站: gunyoungkim.com
Instagram: @ggunyoung9

 

供稿人: Eugene Lee
英译中: Olivia Li

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More than Skin Deep 肌理之下，越限而上

March 12, 2019 2019年3月12日

 

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To mark the launch of Skullcandy‘s wireless Push™ earphones, we teamed up with the brand to present a series of stories celebrating those in the creative community who push themselves to the limit and break boundaries.

For the first story of the series, we caught up with professional skateboarder Wang Di. In this installment, we met up with tattoo artist Miho (Yao Meihui) to chat about body art, defying convention, and having the conviction to succeed.

为庆祝蓝牙无线耳机 Push™ 的重磅推出，Skullcandy 与 Neocha 正式携手合作，为你带来几位艺术家、运动员和音乐人，打破极限，自我出声的故事。

在这系列的第一篇，我们向大家讲述了职业滑手王玓的故事。而本期我们与纹身艺术家姚美惠会面，聊了聊关于身体艺术、挑战常规和相信自己的一切。

Yao Meihui is not your parents’ tattoo artist. Reserved, almost self-effacing, she’s hard to imagine wielding a tattoo gun. Were it not for the Chinese character drawn on her left cheek—jin (金), or gold—you might not even guess she has an interest in body art, much less that she runs one of Shanghai’s most in-demand studios, Shizhuo Tattoo. Her designs are unconventional, with intricate cartoon illustrations of goth girls drawn in a style she describes as Japanese and New School.

Yao is also not her parents’ tattoo artist. Their generation thought tattoos were something decent people just didn’t have. When she came home with her first one, at the end of high school, her parents pretended not to notice, maybe because she got it to celebrate a good score on the college entrance exam. But a few years later, when she announced she wanted to learn how to make them herself, her father hit the roof, and even threatened to cut her off. “My dad was against me learning how to do tattoos for a lot of reasons. One of them is that Northeastern China, where I’m from, is pretty conservative,” she says. “There’s a prejudice against it. If you have tattoos, maybe people will think you’re a thug or a criminal.”

Yet Yao stuck to her guns and kept learning on the sly. She taught herself the basics online, found her first willing customers, and eventually started to work at a roadside shop. After a couple of years, she apprenticed herself at YZ Tattoo, one of China’s most famous studios. Now that she’s become an independent, sought-after artist, even her dad’s come around.

姚美惠并不是父母那一代人眼中的纹身艺术家。她内敛、低调，看起来一点也不像一个会用纹身枪的人。要不是她左脸上画着的“金”字，你大概想不到她会对这项人体艺术有任何兴趣，更想不到她竟然是上海最受欢迎的纹身工作室——十浊刺青的创始人。她的纹身作品多是以“日式和新学院风格”描画复杂的哥特女孩纹身图案，标新立异风格，又不会令人觉得出格。

当然，姚美惠也不是她父母眼中的纹身艺术家。在她父母那一代人眼中，只有不太正派的人才会有纹身。但在高中毕业时，她纹了自己的第一个纹身，她的父母假装没有看到，猜想她也许只是因为考进了一所好大学，想要庆祝一下。但几年后，当她告诉父母，自己想学习如何纹身时，她的父亲火冒三丈，甚至威胁要切断她的经济来源。“我爸讨厌我学纹身有多方面吧，一个是东北那边比较保守，是对有纹身的人的一种偏见。如果说你有纹身的话你可能是一个地痞或一个流氓。”她说。

然而，姚美惠没有放弃，而是偷偷跑去学纹身。她在网上自学了基础知识，找到她的第一位自愿的客户，后来又开始在路边的店里工作。过了几年，她在杨卓刺青，中国最有名的纹身工作室之一当学徒。而现在，她已经成为一个抢手的独立纹身师，她的爸爸也开始理解她。

Ever since she was little, when she saw her first cartoons, Yao has loved to draw. Her childhood dream was to make animated films, and at college, that’s what she studied. Only toward the end of her undergraduate years did she decide to take a different path from her classmates. “Tattoos are a pretty niche thing,” she recalls them telling her. “You probably can’t live off of that.” 

Yao didn’t want to take the easy path. “I like to create different kinds of art,” she says. And she also likes to use different kinds of materials, something she couldn’t really do as an animator. “Skin is a really magical material. Skin is always different,” she says. “Some have soft skin, some people have hard skin, some people have thick skin, some people have thin skin.” On top of that, every body part is different and responds differently to the needle. “Every job is a challenge, you always feel you’re doing something new.”

从姚美惠小时候看了第一部漫画后，她就喜欢上画画。她儿时的梦想是制作动画电影，在大学也是读这个专业。直到本科快毕业时，她才决定选择与她的同学不同的职业。 “纹身是一个很小众地东西，你可能没有办法靠它吃饭。”她回忆当时同学对她的劝告。

姚美惠没有选择更容易走的那条路。“我喜欢创作不一样的造型。” 她说。她更喜欢用不同的创作材料，这是动画制作所没有的。“皮肤就是一个很神奇的材质。皮肤永远是不一样的，有的人皮肤比较软，有的人皮肤比较硬，有的人皮肤厚，有的人皮肤薄。”她说。最重要的是，每一个身体部位是不同的，在针刺下去时也会有不尽相同的反应。“每一次的工作都是挑战，你会觉得自己总是在做一些新的东西。”

Getting to where she is now took determination. Yao didn’t only face opposition from her father, she also had to face doubts from one of her mentors, a well-known tattoo artist with his own shop. “I’d been working there for around three years, and one day we were all sitting in a meeting and talking about tattoo styles and things. And our boss said to the dozen or so of us there, ‘None of the people sitting here will become an artist,’” she recalls. “But actually I was thinking, ‘I will.’” She’s always believed in herself, and that confidence pushes her to always keep moving forward, even when she’s not sure what to do next.

要走到她今天这一步需要极大的决心。姚美惠不仅要面对她父亲的极力反对，还要面对来自她的一位师傅的质疑，那是一位经营着自己的纹身工作室的著名纹身师。“我去了那家店工作了大概三年吧，大家坐在一起开会，讨论纹身风格啊，这些工作方面的事情。然后老本跟我们十几个说，‘在座的各位，你们谁都成不了艺术家。’”她回忆说，“但是我一直认为我可以。”她一直都对自己充满信心，正是这种自信，推动她不断前进，即使是在迷茫的时候。

When Yao finds herself stuck creatively, she’s not immune to doubt. “When you’re blocked, you start to wonder if you’ve veered off course. Maybe my style isn’t natural enough? Maybe what I’m inking isn’t solid enough?” Her response is to force herself to keep creating. That’s the only way to get unstuck. Sometimes she’ll try painting or drawing for a bit— the detour into a different medium broadens her pool of inspiration. “I don’t let my hand stop, don’t let my brain stop,” she says. “You can really get a lot out of that. And when you finally make it past the dead end, you take a big leap forward.”

当姚美惠遇到创作瓶颈时，她也会怀疑自己。“遇到瓶颈期的时候是会怀疑自己会不会有点走偏了？风格会不会不够洒脱？”她的回应是不断强迫自己保持创作。这是打破瓶颈的唯一办法。有时，她会试着去画画：用不同的媒介来拓宽了她的灵感。“我的做法就是手不要停下，脑子也不能停下，真的会收获到不一样的东西，过了瓶颈期就会有一个大飞跃。”

Being an artist is about constantly improving, says Yao. “Your works always look best before you’re finished. When you’ve added the last stroke, you think, ‘Not bad, but not perfect.’ A week later you think ‘They’re terrible, I need to do something better.'” She never stops seeking to outdo herself, making each design better than the last.

“Pushing limits, for me, means not stopping, always trying different methods, and striving to break through that dead end. Then you can soar.”

在姚美惠看来，作为一个艺术家就是要不断提升自己。“自己的作品永远都是画完之前最好看，刚画完觉得嗯，还不错，差一点。过一周就觉得不行，我还需要更好的。她从未停止过对自我的挑战，努力让每一件作品都超越前一个。

“突破极限对我来说就是不要停下来，一直要去尝试不同的方法，然后努力地跨过那道卡，就是质的飞跃。”

Shop the Push™ wireless earphones at Skullcandy’s Tmall page or official website.

想收获一副属于你自己的 Skullcandy 蓝牙无线耳机 Push™，敬请登陆天猫或者官网订购。

Weibo: ~/crowstattoo
Instagram: @meihui_miho

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Videographer: Ni Zhaoyu, Yang Bingying, Paul Gardette, Damien Louise
Photographer: David Yen
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

微博: ~/crowstattoo
Instagram: @meihui_miho

 

供稿人: Allen Young
摄像师: Ni Zhaoyu, Paul Gardette, Yang Bingying, Damien Louise
摄影师: David Yen
英译中: Olivia Li

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Some Kinks to Work Out 未成年人请注意

March 11, 2019 2019年3月11日

It can take a lot of bravery to express your innermost desires publicly, but when you present them with pastel colors, sharp linework, and characters that fit like puzzle pieces, it makes things a lot easier. Darling Kink is an erotic illustrator from the Philippines who channels her private feelings into work meant to force open the discussion of sexuality in her country.

“The Philippines is very repressed, very conservative,” she says in one of Manila’s many malls.  Her neon colored windbreaker matches her nails. “Like many others, my family is very religious, so it’s taboo to talk about these type of things.”

向他人坦露内心的欲望，往往需要很大的勇气。但是当你以柔和的色彩、清晰的线描以及拼图式的人物来表达这些欲望，好像又变得容易一些。Darling Kink 是菲律宾的一名情色插画家，她将自己私密的情感融入作品中，意图推进这个国家对性的公开讨论。

“菲律宾人是非常压抑、非常保守的。” Darling Kink 在马尼拉的一个商场里如此说道，她正身着霓虹色的风衣，衬出她的美甲色。“和很多菲律宾人一样，我的家人也是很虔诚的教徒，所以他们很忌讳谈论这些东西。”

Darling Kink’s family always supported her goal of becoming an artist, and when she enrolled to study visual communication in college, she found that the new surroundings also encouraged her to express herself. She took all those cues and found her way further by drawing her intimate fantasies in private. “I wanted to open this type of discussion, because it’s not available to many women in the Philippines. I wanted to create a space for the discussion of simple things like sexual and romantic relations. But I didn’t set out with an agenda, it just kind of happened.”

While she had trouble finding an audience for her early works on paper, Instagram provided a new outlet, one that seemed tailor-made for her new outlook: “My ability to express desires and fantasies is a luxury, because not a lot of women or those in the LGBTQ community can do that here. I don’t want them to feel guilty about their sexuality. People are seeking support groups to feel normal, and I think my account creates a space for that.” Then, with a sly smile and a mischievous gleam in her eye, she adds, “I want to fight the patriarchy.”

一直以来，Darling Kink 的家人都很支持她成为艺术家。她大学在修读视觉传达专业时，发现这种新的环境令她更想要表达自己。慢慢地，她开始在私下用画笔画出自己内心的性幻想。“我想要开始这种有关性的讨论，因为在菲律宾很多女性都没有办法讨论这个话题。我想为她们创造一些空间，去谈论性和爱这类简单的话题。但我并没有特意做什么计划，只是自然而然开始做这件事。”

对于她早期纸上创作的作品，要找到观众并不容易；这时候，Instagram 提供了一个全新的创意出口，一个似乎为她量身订做的新出路：“我很幸运，可以自由地表达欲望和性幻想，因为在这里，很多女性和 LGBTQ 群体都无法做到这一点。我不希望他们要因为自己的性取向而感到羞愧。许多人会去找支持小组，让自己感觉像个正常人。我想，我的 Instagram 也算是创造了这样一个空间吧。”说完，她露出了狡黠的笑容，眼睛闪着调皮的光芒，她说：“我要对抗这个父权社会。”

Around the time we spoke, President Rodrigo Duterte was in the news for saying that as a teenager he molested his maid while she slept, a story he later claimed to have made up for dramatic purposes. It was just the latest controversy about women’s rights to entangle the president, who’s been known to make jokes about rape.

As if to emphasize her point about the country being very traditional and religious, many busy streets that are usually choked with traffic were flooded the day we met by over a million devotees participating in a Catholic procession called The Feast of the Black Nazarene. More than 80 percent of the country identifies as Catholic, which translates to some very conservative statistics relating to sexuality.

在我们见面的时候，新闻正报道菲律宾总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特（Rodrigo Duterte）曾说自己十几岁的时候曾经趁他的女佣睡觉性骚扰她，但后来又改口说那只是为了抢眼球才编造的故事。对于这位爱以性侵笑话取乐的总统，这只是他最近的另一起有关女性权利的丑闻。

似乎是为了强调她关于这个国家非常传统和充满宗教色彩的观点，在我们见面这天，通常许多塞满车的繁忙街道被超过一百万名的信徒挤满，他们正参加菲律宾天主教年度盛事黑拿撒勒人节（the Feast of the Black Nazarene）的活动。这个国家超过 80％ 的人口都信奉天主教，在有关性的话题方面，他们都是非常保守的人。

It’s the only country in the world, aside from Vatican City, where divorce is illegal. Abortion is strictly prohibited, even in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. A plan to provide contraception to the poor has been a battle for decades. HIV is spreading at the highest rate in the Asia-Pacific region. And while some consider the Philippines to be the most LGTBQ-tolerant country in Asia, violence, and discrimination are still serious problems.

菲律宾是世界上除梵蒂冈外唯一一个离婚是非法的国家，堕胎也被严格禁止，即使是因强奸、乱伦或在危及母亲生命的情况下。一个为穷人提供避孕用品的计划竟然也被争议了数十年。这里的艾滋病蔓延速度是亚太区最快的。虽然有些人认为菲律宾是亚洲国家中对 LGTBQ 群体最宽容的国家，但针对性的暴力和歧视仍然比较严重。

Darling Kink believes artists have a duty to address issues that others can’t. “The art scene here is very open, but it’s a very privileged circle. It’s mainly an upper-middle-class community. Everyone I know in the art world comes from backgrounds that allow them to explore,” she says, including herself within those ranks. “We’re offered a luxury that not many people have. So we have a responsibility to open these type of discussions for those who can’t.”

This activist streak of hers isn’t limited to sexuality; she also creates work addressing many other issues but doesn’t post it to her main feed. She was even involved in street protests when Duterte was first elected and experienced a backlash for it on social media: “I was active in protesting against him in the beginning, but I just got tired of everything. The political landscape here is so draining. A lot of people in my Facebook network were supporters, so I ended up deleting that account. I had 4,000 followers, but getting rid of it kept me and my family safe, which was more important than people  having access to my art.”

Darling Kink 认为艺术家有责任来解决这些别人未能解决的问题。“这里的艺术圈非常开放，但在这个圈子里的通常都来自中上层阶级，他们的家庭背景让他们有能力去自由探索。”她说道，“我们算很幸运的了，不是很多人有这种运气。因此，我们有责任去为社会上的更多人去推动这些讨论。”

她关心的并不限于性相关的话题；她的作品也会关注其他问题，只是没有被她重点展示出来。在杜特尔特首次当选时，她甚至参与了当时的街头抗议活动，也因此受到了一些报复。“我一开始也很积极地进行各种抗议他的活动，但后来我逐渐厌倦了这一切。这个国家的政治环境实在让人感到太无力了。在我的 Facebook 朋友中，很多人都是他的支持者，所以我最终注销了这个帐户。我在上面有 4000 名粉丝，但注销这个帐号能保证我和家人的安全，这一点对我来说，比让人们看到我的作品更重要。”

Now she’s wrestling with how to expand her impact through her art and is starting to bump up against the limits of her erotic brand: “There are other issues beyond sexuality that need fighting for. We’re still struggling with basic concerns like health care and labor rights. Am I really doing anything to address the most serious issues in the Philippines?” It’s a question that people who truly care often ask themselves, and one that offers a hint to what might be next.

现在，她正努力思考如何让自己的作品扩大影响，并开始尝试打破自己的标志性情色作品的限制：“在性之外，还有许多需要争取的问题。我们仍然在为医疗保健和劳动权利这些基本权利在努力。我所做的事情真的能有助于解决菲律宾最严重的问题吗？”对于真正心系这个国家的人来说，这是他们常常扪心自问的一个问题，一个让他们思考下一步行动的问题。

Instagram: @darlingkink

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

Instagram: @darlingkink

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
中译英: 李秋群

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The Glamorous Boys of Tang 唐朝绮丽男

March 4, 2019 2019年3月4日

Years before Ang Lee’s gay Confucian melodrama The Wedding Banquet, or Tsai Ming-liang’s slow-burning cinematic exploration of crisscrossed desires Vive l’amour, Chiu Kang-chien’s 1985 film The Glamorous Boys of Tang debuted in Taiwanese cinemas. The blatantly queer and absurdly costumed film was not well received on an island still under martial law. Featuring exorcisms, gruesome deaths, and orgies, it naturally ran afoul of the authorities, resulting in heavy cuts. But it also represented a small milestone in Taiwanese queer cinema. Now Su Hui-yu has released a remake that hews closer to the script’s subversive edge than even the original. (Watch a trailer here).

1985 年，在李安的同志情节剧《喜宴》，以及蔡明亮缓慢探寻交织爱欲与城市疏离感的“水三部曲”都还未面世前，邱刚健的电影《唐朝绮丽男》在台湾院线上映了。电影中露骨的同性情欲和穿着奇装异服的画面，在当时仍在戒严的岛上并不受欢迎。这部以驱魔、死亡和狂欢为题的电影，理所当然与当局的立场发生冲突，影片也招致大幅剪裁。但它仍代表了台湾同志电影中的一个小小的里程碑。现在，导演苏汇宇重新翻拍了这部电影，比原作更加贴近剧本中的颠覆性。

Su’s version, which updates not only the technology but also the content to better reflect Taiwan’s diverse contemporary sexual realities, can be viewed as a four-channel video installation or a short film. Somewhere between respectful homage and radical remake, it resists easy classification, but partly for this reason it makes for a truly hypnotic watch. Su’s Dionysian vision celebrates queerness as something that refuses to be contained by normal modes of thought and experience. Instead, it presents the queer as what overflows and disturbs ordinary life, offering in its place agonies and ecstasies far stranger and more intense. To explore these themes in greater depth, I spoke with the artist about his remake, which had its European premiere in January at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

苏汇宇的短片于今年 1 月在荷兰鹿特丹国际电影节上进行欧洲首映，也曾经在台湾以四道视频装置形式展出过。他的重拍有技术上的更新迭代，内容也更佳地反映当代台湾多元性别的现况。作品游移于对原作的致敬和激进的改编之间，难以定义。或许也正因如此，而更令人神往。苏汇宇纵欲狂欢的视界，颂扬“酷儿”作为一种对抗常规思维与经验模式制约的存在状态。伴随着更多诡异而强烈的痛楚和狂喜，它从庸常生活的框架中漫溢出来，并扰乱了原本的秩序。为了更深入探讨这些主题，我与这位艺术家讨论了他的作品。

Neocha: What was the initial impetus for The Glamorous Boys of Tang? What attracted you to the original work?

Su Hui-yu: Starting around 2012, I became interested in using my work to explore history in a dreamlike, psychedelic fashion. I drew on past works that were originally misunderstood, ahead of their times, or taboo, including films, photos, books, or counter-cultural events. Chiu Kang-chien’s The Glamorous Boys of Tang definitely fits this mold. But it wasn’t until 2016 that a well-known photographer and friend of mine, Chang Chao-tang, who was Chiu’s original cameraman, reminded me of the film.

I saw the movie posters when I was just a child, but revisiting the film again later, I understood why it was not commercially successful, and why the original script couldn’t be accurately reflected on screen. It was just too transgressive, with its beautiful boys, its threesomes, its juxtaposition of spiritual and sexual images, and its necrophilia. There was simply no way for it to be faithfully adapted in the martial law period. And so I became fascinated by the spirit of the original work and tried to reinterpret it to uncover new possibilities in an entirely different social context.

Neocha:《唐朝绮丽男》的最初创作动力是什么？是什么吸引你去看原作的？

苏汇宇: 2012年左右，我开始对一件事感兴趣——也就是借由自己的作品，以梦境般、迷幻的方式来探索历史。我利用了那些原本被误解、超前于时代或禁忌的作品，包括电影、照片、书籍或反文化事件。邱刚健的《唐朝绮丽男》绝对符合这个模式。但直到 2016 年，我的一个摄影师前辈张照堂，也是《唐朝绮丽男》本片的摄影，才让我再想起了这部电影。

我小时候就看过电影海报，但后来才真正看了电影。我明白为什么这部电影并不卖座，以及为什么最初的剧本不能在屏幕上准确地呈现。剧本实在太惊世骇俗了——漂亮的男孩、三人行、精神和性意象的并列，以及恋尸癖。在戒严时期，根本不可能忠实地将剧本翻拍成电影。因此，我被原著的精神深深吸引，并试图重新解释它，在一个完全不同的社会背景下发现新的可能性。

Neocha: Extremes of sex and violence play a role in this work and others by you. What keeps drawing you back to these themes?

Su Hui-yu: First, when viewed with unflinching eyes, sex and death are by their very nature beautiful. Second, when you juxtapose them, these two states seem to merge into something that transcends either of the individual terms. I was fascinated by this, but I also found that that these subjects and sentiments are not just personal but also closely tied to collective memories, society, ideologies, and moral systems.

Neocha: 在你的影片中有着极端的性与暴力。是什么让你回想起这些主题？

苏汇宇: 首先，当我们用无畏的眼光来看，性和死亡在本质上就是美丽的。其次，当你把它们并置时，性与死亡会融合为一，成为超越两者本身的某种状态。我对此非常着迷，但我也发现这些主题和情感不仅仅是个人的，还与集体记忆、社会、意识形态和道德体系紧密相连。

Neocha: In many ways, your interpretation of The Glamorous Boys of Tang seems incredibly queer but not “gay” in a straightforward or homonormative sense. How would you position your work vis-à-vis queer identities?

Su Hui-yu: To liberate our desires, we need to try to go beyond LGBT categorical thinking, no matter what our sexualities are. Only through a profound reconsideration of our bodies and minds can we shake off the vestiges of an ultimately conservative sexual imagination. In this respect, these matters should be important to everyone. This is what I took from Chiu Kang-chien’s film. Yes, it could be interpreted as a film about LGBT identities, but it could also be far more radical than that. So, for me, it’s not just a reshooting project but an attempt to redefine “queer” as a wider concept for everybody in order to free our bodies from outdated ideologies.

Neocha: 在某种意义上，你对《唐朝绮丽男》的改编带有很大的酷儿色彩，但这又不是一部传统同性恋霸权的“同志电影”。你如何定义作品对酷儿身份认同的观点呢？

苏汇宇: 依我之见，为了解放欲望，无论我们的性倾向是什么，都应该超越 LGBT 这种分类思维。只有通过深刻地反思身体和思想，我们才能扫除根本上保守的性想象。从这方面看来，这些问题对每个人都很重要。这是我从邱刚健电影里理解而来的内容。是的，它可以被解读为一部关于同性恋身份的电影，但它也可能远比那更激进。所以，对我来说，这不仅仅是一个重编的剧本，而是尝试重新定义“酷儿”为一个更广泛的概念，为了把我们的身体，从过时的意识形态中解放出来。

Website: suhuiyu.com

 

Contributor: Brandon Kemp
Chinese Translation: Chen Yuan

网站: suhuiyu.com

 

供稿人: Brandon Kemp
英译中: Chen Yuan

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A Tenacious Spirit 一块滑板上的无限人生

March 1, 2019 2019年3月1日

 

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To mark the launch of Skullcandy‘s wireless Push™ earphones, we teamed up with the brand to present a series of stories celebrating those in the creative community who push themselves to the limit and break boundaries.

In the first story of the series, we caught up with professional skateboarder Wang Di to chat about skating, perseverance, and the meaning of courage. For the second installment, we met up with tattoo artist Miho (Yao Meihui).

为庆祝蓝牙无线耳机 Push™ 的重磅推出，Skullcandy 与 Neocha正式携手合作，为你带来几位艺术家、运动员和音乐人，打破极限，自我出声的故事。

作为我们的专题人物的第一位，我们有幸请到了职业滑手王玓，请他与我们聊一聊关于滑板背后的故事，以及他对滑板与“Pushing Limits”的理解。而在下一期，我们则将与纹身艺术家姚美惠相约，讲述更多故事。

“The spirit of skateboarding is courage plus perseverance.”

–

“滑板精神等于勇气加永不言弃。”

Every skater has a stubborn, tenacious side. From popping ollies on the street to landing tricks on ramps and rails, learning to skate takes perseverance. For professional skateboarder Wang Di, the constant challenge is part of the sport’s allure. “Pushing limits is the only way to become one of the best,” he says. “I don’t give up easily. If I can’t figure something out today, I’ll push myself tomorrow.”

Born in 1995, Wang’s already been skating for over a decade. While his former classmates are stuck in the rat race, slaving away in front of a computer, he’s making a name for himself as a professional athlete. He owes his success to his refusal to give in, no matter how tired or frustrated he gets. “Skateboarding takes courage,” he says. “You have to be willing to challenge everything, you can’t back down.”

每个滑板人都有他固执、执着的一面。从在街上不断蹦跳到在坡道和铁轨上尝试技巧，玩滑板太需要坚持不懈的品质了。对于职业滑板运动员王玓来说，不断挑战这一切，正是这项运动诱人之处。

生于 1995 年的王玓，现在已经有十多年滑龄了。在他的同学们按部就班地读书、应聘、工作，走着规划好的人生路时，他却让自己的名字成为了滑板界的一道风采。王玓的成功归功于无论遭遇了多少疲惫或沮丧他都拒绝屈服。 “滑板它需要的就是你的勇气。”他说，“你要敢于挑战这一切，不要缩。”

“I don’t give up easily. If I can’t figure something out today, I’ll push myself tomorrow.”

–

“突破界限才能成为佼佼者。我是不会心甘情愿放弃的，今天做不出来，明天也要拼出来！”

Wang learned perseverance from his father, who gave him his first board at age 12. When his son showed a talent for skating, he encouraged him to follow his passion as far as he could—and then keep going. Before long, Wang was taking home prizes at competitions.

Back in school, whenever a skateboarding event fell on a weekday, his family let him take time off to compete. “The longest I ever took off was a week. When I look back now, it’s hard to believe,” he says. “Compared to other parents of that generation, my dad was really open-minded. And he knows a lot about skateboarding—he started getting into it at the same time I did.” So when Wang announced he wanted to take the leap and skate professionally, his dad had his back.

王玓是从他父亲那里学会的坚持。也正是他父亲，在他 12 岁时送给了他人生第一块滑板。当王玓表现出滑板天赋时，父亲鼓励他尽可能地追随这爱好和激情——然后继续前进。不久之后，王玓就带回了在滑板比赛中赢得的奖品。

那时候王玓还在上学，但如果有滑板活动安排在周一到周五，他爸爸却允许他请假去外地比赛。“我最长请过一个星期的假，现在想起来，我都觉得不可思议。”王玓说，“和其他同龄的父母比起来，我父亲特别开明。而且我爸其实还蛮了解滑板的，他也跟我一起开始了解滑板。”所以在王玓表明了他想继续当职业滑手的念头时，他的父亲亦表态支持。

“Pushing limits is the only way to become one of the best.”

–

“突破界限才能成为佼佼者。”

In China, skateboarding is still viewed with suspicion, and even finding a spot to skate is hard—you never know when you’ll be chased away by an overzealous security guard. So telling people you’re a professional skater raises more than a few eyebrows.

But thanks to the determination of skaters like Wang, things are changing. Skateboarding recently won Olympic recognition, and China will field a team in the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. Wang’s courage in defying convention has helped the sport go mainstream—though he puts it in much humbler terms. “The path was right for me,” he says. “All I wanted to do was focus on this one thing.”

在中国，滑板运动仍然不被看好，甚至找到滑板的地方也很难——你永远不知道什么时候你会被一个多管闲事的保安赶走。所以告诉别人你是一名职业滑手，引起的可不仅仅是别人的注意。

但得益于越来越多像王玓这样致力于滑板的选手们的努力，现在滑板运动为国际奥林匹克所认可，中国也将在 2020 年的东京奥运会组建一支专业滑板队。王玓敢于违抗先例的勇气，也帮助了这项运动的推广——尽管他以更加谦逊的方式表达了这一点。 “这条路很适合我，”他说， “就不要做别的了，就专注于一件事情。”

“All I wanted to do was focus on this one single thing.”

–

“就不要做别的了，就专注于一件事情。”

For Wang, doggedly training and daring to outperform the competition are at the sport’s heart. “The spirit of skateboarding is courage plus perseverance.” Mastering a new trick can take days or even months. Some take ten times as long as others. At its worst, it’s repetitive, tedious, and painful: you try the same trick over and over again, you keep falling on the unforgiving concrete. But diehard skaters keep getting up, bruised and bloodied, and hop back on their boards to try again. The feeling of finally landing that trick, says Wang, “is the rush of your life.”

Pushing limits doesn’t mean attempting flashy, dangerous maneuvers, he says. It means overcoming doubt. And the confidence and perseverance he’s gained on his board extend far beyond skating. “On my board, I don’t have a care in the world,” he says. “I feel there’s nothing I can’t do. Skating’s made me optimistic about life.”

对王玓来说，坚持训练并且敢于超越是滑板运动的核心。“滑板精神等于勇气加永不言弃。”一个动作的训练，很可能要花上几天到几月的时间，有时甚至要付出的十倍于别人的努力才能成功。最糟糕的是，这包含着重复、乏味、痛苦：你一遍遍地尝试同样的伎俩，又一次次摔倒在无情的混凝土上。但是顽强的滑手会不断站起来，带着淤青和血丝，然后继续跳上他们的板上再试一次。最终成功落地的感觉，王玓说，“就感觉人生达到了高潮。”

对他来说，挑战界限并不意味着“拼命”，也不意味着太过冒险。

王玓从滑板中汲取而来的坚韧和自信，早已超越了这项运动本身，融为了他生活的一部分。“我在板上就没有烦恼的事情。”王玓说，“所有事情都觉得可以自己来解决的。滑板让我对生活的看法变得乐观。”

“Skateboarding takes courage. You have to be willing to challenge everything, you can’t back down.”

–

“滑板它需要的就是你的勇气。你要敢于挑战这一切，不要缩。”

Shop the Push™ wireless earphones at Skullcandy’s Tmall page or official website.

想收获一副属于你自己的 Skullcandy 蓝牙无线耳机 Push™，敬请登陆天猫或者官网订购。

Weibo: ~/王玓WD
Instagram: @wangdi_1995

 

Contributor: Chen Yuan
Videographer: Damien Louise, Paul Gardette, Ni Zhaoyu
Photographer: David Yen

微博: ~/王玓WD
Instagram: @wangdi_1995

 

供稿人: Chen Yuan
摄像师: Damien Louise, Paul Gardette, Ni Zhaoyu
摄影师: David Yen

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Beauty at Any Price 当美丽变成一种血腥的理想

February 25, 2019 2019年2月25日
Tummy Tuck, 2013, oil on canvas, 140 × 119 cm

Cosmetic surgery is not for the faint of heart. No matter how you slice it, cutting people open to reshape their features is a gory business. Patients are wheeled home bandaged like mummies to start on a recovery that can take weeks. Once the swelling subsides and the scars fade, patients may well be happy with the results, but it’s a grim irony that a procedure to make you more beautiful can leave you looking—on the short term at least—like an extra in a slasher flick.

This awkward interim period, when patients have only just emerged from the operating chamber, is the starting point for Su Yang‘s paintings. Her work portrays in grisly detail the immediate effects of the pursuit of perfection: the bruises, the blood, the gauze, the swelling. She paints in oil and tempera, in garish reds and purples, and her works quite intentionally have something of a horror show about them. Yet the paintings are more than gross-out pics: Yang offers them as a critique of the beauty standards that lead women to submit to traumatizing procedures.

整容手术并不适合那些胆子不够大的人。无论如何，把人们的身体划开、切开、再塑形，听起来都像是一件血淋淋的可怕差事。手术后，整容者坐着轮椅，被包扎得像木乃伊，开始为期数周的恢复过程。一旦肿胀消退、疤痕淡去，他们可能对成果感到满意。但令人感到讽刺的是，整容手术明明是为了让人变得更美丽，却有可能让你（起码在短时间内）看上去像是血腥恐怖电影的一员。

当整容者刚刚结束手术，接下来要面对的那段尴尬过渡期启发了杨苏的创作。在作品中，她以触目惊心的细节，描绘出这种为追求完美所引发的立即后果：瘀伤、鲜血、纱布、肿胀。她使用油画和丹培拉，刻意涂上过分鲜艶的红色和紫色让作品看起来更惊悚。然而，她的画作不仅仅是一些令人不敢直视的画面，更是用于批判当今逼使女性经历这些创伤所达到审美标准的警语。

Rhinoplasty, 2013, oil on canvas, 152 × 137 cm
Injection of Hyaluronic Acid, 2014, egg tempera on clay board, 30 × 30 cm

Yang is a scholar and artist from China. She learned to paint and draw from her father, who began instructing her in European techniques at a young age. In college, at Tsinghua University, she continued to paint, and also studied sculpture, lacquer, glass art, and graphic design. While doing a master’s in fine arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo, she discovered an interest in feminism, and since then her art has explored the procedures that women, particularly Chinese women, undergo to make their bodies conform to patriarchal ideas of beauty. She’s now working toward a PhD in visual art at the University of Melbourne, where she uses her art and research to explore the demands women face in the name of beauty.

杨苏是来自中国的一名学者和艺术家。她从小跟着父亲学习绘画，教授她欧洲绘画的技法。在清华大学就读期间，她继续画画，同时学习雕塑、漆器、玻璃艺术，以及平面设计。在纽约州立大学水牛城分校（State University of New York at Buffalo）修读美术硕士学位期间，她渐渐发展了女权主义方面的兴趣。从那时起，她开始通过艺术去探讨女性——尤其是中国女性——为了父权社会的审美观念而整容的议题。现在，她正在墨尔本大学修读视觉艺术的博士学位，用自己的艺术创作和研究，探索那些“以美之名”对女性提出的种种要求。

Eye Lift, 2013, oil on canvas, 140 × 147 cm
Post-Laser Treatment 1, 2015, oil on canvas, 140 × 147 cm
Double-Eyelid Surgery, 2014, egg tempera on woodboard, 30 × 30 cm
Double Faces Post-Cosmetic Surgery, 2015, oil on canvas, 150 × 145 cm

Are her paintings a condemnation of cosmetic surgery? For Yang, that’s not quite the point. “It’s more that my works emphasize the ideologies that encourage many young Chinese women to become the same single person, without their own features,” she says. In that sense, she views these beauty-enhancement procedures as a symptom of a larger problem: the pressure to conform to uniform, unrealistic standards.

她的作品是对整容手术的谴责吗？对于杨苏来说并不完全是。“我的作品更多的是想强调那种鼓励中国年轻女性将自己变成同一个模子刻出的产品、失去自我特色的意识形态。”她解释道。从这个意义上来看，她认为这些让人变美的手术隐含一个更大的问题：让人们顺应不切实际的统一标准的压力。

Rhinoplasty, 2013, oil on canvas, 152 × 137 cm
Recovery Period, 2014, oil on canvas, 127 × 165 cm
Double Faces Pre- & Post-Cosmetic Surgery 3, 2016, oil on canvas, 112 × 163 cm
Double Faces Pre- & Post- Cosmetic Surgery 1, 2016, oil on canvas, 113 × 150 cm

In her academic work, Yang focuses on China, where cosmetic surgery is a booming industry. She notes that the pressures to look pretty are somewhat different in Australia and the US. “The notions of beauty are localized and formed by their own cultural and social histories,” she says. “However, I also see similarities in these standards, which are partly formed by a global consumer culture.” Her subjects are not limited to China but seem to show women of various ages and ethnicities.

She also doesn’t solely paint straightforward post-op portraits. Some of her works use cosmetic procedures as a starting point but take a more fantastic turn, with faces within faces, or people peeling off their skin.

杨苏的学术作品研究了审美标准如何影响中国女性。她指出在这么一个整容行业蓬勃发展的国家里，女性承受的变美压力，与在澳大利亚和美国有所不同。她说：“人们对美的看法是本地化的，受当地文化和社会历史所影响。不过，这些标准也有相似之处。部分原因是全球消费文化所导致。”她的研究对象不限于中国女性，也会涵括不同年龄和国籍。

她的创作不只描画人们的术后肖像，其他一些作品以化妆过程作为出发点，再加入一些奇幻的构想，譬如脸中有脸，或是人们剥掉皮肤。

 

Stripping Off Face 1, 2015, oil on canvas, 148 × 150 cm

Critiques of cosmetic surgery often poke fun at the dead eyes or frozen smiles of a procedure gone awry. Yang takes a different tack, showing a side of the cosmetic industry that’s seldom seen—the seamy underbelly, as it were, that’s surgically tucked out of sight. For many people, it seems, beauty is a bloody pursuit.

人们在批评整容手术时，常常会举例一些失败的案例，譬如那些死气沉沉的眼睛或是僵硬的笑容。但杨苏却采取了不同的策略，她选择揭示美容行业鲜为人知的一面——通过手术隐藏起来的丑陋。对许多人来说，美丽也是一种血腥的理想。

Liposuction of The Legs, 2014, oil on canvas, 124 × 166 cm
Post Laser Treatment 2, 2015, oil on canvas, 161.5 × 115.5 cm

Website: suyangvisual.com

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

网站: suyangvisual.com

 

供稿人: Allen Young
英译中: 李秋群

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Modern Medieval Fantasia 泡一个快乐的煎蛋浴

February 20, 2019 2019年2月20日
Ctesiphon Secret Chamber

What happens when you cross an illuminated manuscript with a digital collage? Indonesian illustrator Anindya Anugrah offers an appealingly quirky answer. She repurposes archival images to create playful scenes that whisk together Europe and Asia, the middle ages and the twenty-first century. Yet for all their head-spinning, continent-spanning bravura, they never feel forced—just a little uncanny, like images from some alternate universe where Indian royalty dined with European nobles.

Anugrah has a special fondness for medieval or Renaissance touches. “As a child I was very much influenced by the thought that all fairy tales took place in the medieval times,” she explains. Since then, she’s had a bit of an obsession with the European middle ages, and in particular with illuminated manuscripts. “Most figures depicted in these manuscripts have a similar, sad-looking expression, no matter where they come from or what purpose they serve,” she says. “I like the idea of giving those figures a different ‘life’ and ‘role’—a happy one with modern twists.”

当欧洲中世纪的手抄本遇上现代数字拼贴画，会擦出什么火花？印尼插画家 Anindya Anugrah  提供了一个另类却引人入胜的解答。她重新利用这些历史图像，将欧洲和亚洲、中世纪和二十一世纪巧妙地融合在有趣的场景里。然而，这些令人目眩神迷的大胆拼接看起来丝毫没有一点不协调，取而代之的是那异乎寻常的神秘感——她的创作像是撷取自另一个宇宙，在那里印度和欧洲的皇室贵族会一起用餐。

Anindya Anugrah 特别喜欢中世纪和文艺复兴时期的风格。“当我还小的时候，我认为所有童话故事都发生在中古世纪。”她解释道。从那之后，她对中世纪就产生了一点痴迷，尤其是那些带有华美装饰的手抄本。“这些手抄本里的人大多都带有一种类似的悲伤的表情，无论他们来自何方或是要做什么。因此我想要给这些人物一个不同的生活、扮演不同角色的机会——一个现代的快乐颠覆。”

Midnight in Birdland

In “Midnight in Birdland,” musicians decked out in what appears to be Elizabethan garb perform onstage in a crowded jazz hall for an European and Central Asian audience. Likewise, “Macaca Nigra Race” shows medieval lords and ladies watching Indonesian macaques lumbering across a finish line on a racing track, while “Saturn” has knights sporting space helmets and pepperoni shields on an expedition to a distant planet. One can’t quite tell if these cross-cultural hybrids are meant to offer some commentary on European or Asian history, or whether Anugrah just enjoys tossing images from the past into a digital blender.

在《Midnight in Birdland》中，音乐家穿着伊丽莎白时代的服装，在一个拥挤的爵士音乐厅里为来自欧洲和中亚的观众表演。《Macaca Nigra Race》展示了一群中世纪的领主和女士，正在观看印尼猕猴在赛道上向终点跋涉；而《Saturn》则有头戴太空头盔的骑士，拿着披萨盾牌进行一场星球远征。我们无法确定这些跨文化的创作是否意在对欧洲或亚洲历史提供一些评论，或者只是 Anindya Anugrah 单纯喜欢将过去的图像丢进数码世界里混合为一。

Macaca Nigra Race
Saturn
Music Box

Anugrah began this series of illustrations in law school, while learning about copyright and art appropriation. Like any conscientious lawyer, she uses only images in the public domain, manipulating them and folding them into her own drawings. “I make major alterations to each of these sources, changing the shape and colors of the figures’ clothes, the expressions on their faces, their gestures, etc., and combine them with my own drawings,” she says. The results are entirely unexpected and weirdly familiar—like the picture of the man sitting in a bathtub of fried eggs. So meticulously is the image stitched together that you almost wonder whether she didn’t just unearth an illustration of a bizarre bygone bathing custom.

Anindya Anugrah 在法学院开始创作这一系列插图，同时学习版权和艺术品挪用的相关知识。如同一位尽责的律师，她只会使用公有的图像，将它们再创成符合自己想像的样子。“我大幅更改了这些图像，改变了人物的形状和颜色、脸上的表情、动作等等，并将它们与我自己的绘画结合。”最后结果完全出乎意料，让人感到异常地熟悉——像是那一张有一个男人坐在煎蛋浴缸里的照片。她是如此细致地将图像拼接在一起，让人不禁怀疑她是不是揭露了一个中世纪诡异的洗澡习惯。

Breggfast 1
Breggfast 2
Breggfast 3
Momotaro
Waltz Club
Petites Fleurs Rouges

After experimenting with manual collages, Anugrah eventually switched to image-editing software to get the results she wanted. “These collages are intended to look seamless—almost like paintings—so I tried doing them digitally. That’s the method I’ve been using ever since.” She finds images from online sources—archives, or scanned book pages—and carefully recomposes them.

在尝试手工拼贴后，Anindya Anugrah 最终切换到图像编辑软件以达到她想要的结果。“这些拼贴画需要看起来天衣无缝——就像是画出来的——所以我尝试用数码软件去做，从这之后我就一直使用这种方法。”她从在线资源库里的历史档案或是扫描书页中找到图像，并仔细地重新组合它们。

1001 Sleepless Nights
The Other Side of the Moon
Neptune
Pulheim Point
Love Potion

Her scenes don’t just hang on walls or glow on digital screens. They also grace a line of products—scarves, tote bags, and post cards—that she sells under the brand name Phantasien. “I first turned my collages into wearable items to make some money and get noticed. But as my works have developed and my ideas become more complex, I’ve been challenged to explore other media,” she says. “Having my works printed on fabric makes them look more painting-esque and alive than they do on paper.”

Whether on paper, on silk, or on fabric, Anugrah’s digital designs bring a clever new life to art from centuries past.

她的作品不只适合出现在墙上或是屏幕上。他们还推出了一系列产品——围巾、手提袋和明信片。她的品牌叫做 Phantasien。“首先我将拼贴画变成了一些可穿戴的物品，以引起注意和赚一点钱。但随着我的作品发展和想法变得更复杂，我一直在挑战探索其他媒介。”她说，“我后来将作品印在布料上，使得它们看起来比在纸上更具绘画风格和活力。”

无论是在纸上、丝绸上还是在布料上，Anindya Anugrah 的设计都成功为百年之前的艺术注入了新生命。

Anindya Anugrah’s tote bags and postcards are now available on the Neocha Shop. Supplies are limited, so order now!

Anindya Anugrah 的手提袋和明信片现已于 Neocha 商店发售。数量有限，立即订购！

Instagram: @_phantasien

Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Yang Yixuan

Instagram: @_phantasien

供稿人: Allen Young
英译中: Yang Yixuan

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In the Streets of Saigon 在西贡，一个人的好天气

February 18, 2019 2019年2月18日

A woman walks past a smoky food cart, turning to hear a vendor a few yards away who appears to be calling out to her. It’s an ordinary scene on an unremarkable street corner in Saigon, but the composition has an accidental perfection: a triangle formed by the lamppost and the rays of sun frame the central figures, whose two faces are separated only by a narrow strip of color. Above them, billows of smoke from the grill suffuse the scene with an otherworldly light. The snapshot seems to conjure a whole social world and elevate to some higher, more ethereal realm. This is street photography at its most eloquent.

一个女人正走过一台热气蒸腾的食物摊车，她转过头去，似乎在回应站在几米外的小贩的呼喊——这是发生在越南西贡 （胡志明市）街边一个极为平常的日常场景，但画面的构图却意外的完美：由灯柱和光束所构成的三角形舞台，正中央是面孔被光线照射的明暗区分开来的主角人物。在他们之上，烤架升起的烟雾弥漫四方，化为一片超凡脱俗的光芒。这张照片抓取到了凡世的一瞬，并将其升华至更空灵的境界。这就是街头摄影叙事张力的极致展现。

Phuong Tran, the Saigon-based photographer who took this photo, is largely self-taught. A copywriter by day, he started taking pictures simply because he had a smartphone and decided to play around with it. “Back in the day, I’d go around Saigon and take pictures of whatever I liked,” he recalls. “I just captured things, and it brought me a lot of fun.”

拍摄这张照片的是自学成才的摄影师 Phuong Tran。他生活在西贡，全职工作是一名文案，会开始拍照仅仅是因为他买了一支智能手机，想要摸索一下而已。“白天的时候，我会在西贡四处乱逛，拍下我喜欢的照片。我只是想捕捉住一些时刻，这个过程很有趣。”他回忆道。

Like many other amateurs, he discovered he had a knack for photography, and that talent quickly turned into an obsession. “It was like another world I could escape to. I thought about it all the time, I began to read materials, and I got praise from friends,” he says. Eventually he decided to upgrade to a mirrorless camera, which allowed him more control over the shots he took. He now shoots with a Sony Alpha 6000, and easy-to-use model that suits his needs.

像许多业余的摄影爱好者一样，他发现了自己在摄影方面的天赋。很快这种天赋演变成为他的热爱。“摄影是我可以躲进的另一个世界。我无时无刻都想拍照，于是我开始阅读相关的资料，朋友也对我的作品给予很多肯定。”最终，他决定从手机升级到微单相机，这让他在拍摄时能有更多掌控。现在，他用的是一台索尼 Alpha 6000 相机。这是一台操作简单的相机，正符合他的需求。

Tran’s work has earned him a devoted following on Instagram. “The most important thing I want to capture in a photograph is the connection between myself and the subject,” he explains. “If that event brings me excitement, or a thrill, or gives me pause—well, that’s something worth capturing. Then comes the question of light, colors, composition, etc., to tell the story in a beautiful way.” Many of his images show light refracted or reflected—piercing smoke, streaming through windows, or blurring background and foreground in a shop window.

Phuong Tran 的作品为他赢得了 Instagram 上一批忠实的粉丝。“一张照片最重要的是要捕捉到我和被摄者之间的连结。”他解释说，“如果某件事物让我感到兴奋、激动，或让我为此停留，那就值得拍下来。再来就是光线、色彩、构图的问题，如何通过好看的画面来讲述故事。”他的许多照片都利用烟雾、窗户等物体来表现光线的折射或反射，或是透过玻璃橱窗模糊背景和前景。

While he’s also taken photos in Burma and Taiwan—where the above image is from—his favorite subject is still Vietnam, and especially his hometown Saigon. Its “messy streets, strange people, and changing appearance” have inspired him since he first started pointing and clicking. His Saigon is a city of bicycles, scooters, overhead wires, its buildings comfortably weathered and daubed in a ubiquitous turquoise.

曾在缅甸和台湾（上面这张照片的拍摄地）拍摄，他最喜欢的拍摄地依然是越南，尤其是他的家乡西贡。这座城市“杂乱的街道、陌生的人和不断变化的市景”都是他至今的灵感泉源。他镜头下的西贡充满自行车、摩托车和高架电线，这里的建筑也披上了一层赏心悦目的绿松石色。

It’s also a city that’s changing quickly. “Just like other Asian cities, Saigon has its own conflict between preservation and development,” Tran says. “Every day I witness the replacement of old by the new, and I think I need to capture these images before they’re gone, to give them a second life.”

这也是一座变化快速的城市。他说：“和其它亚洲城市一样，西贡也面临着发展和保护的两难困境。我每天见证着新旧的交替，我想趁着这些画面消失之前，将它们记录下来，给予它们第二次生命。”

Website: phuongtran.format.com
Instagram: @deewonderer

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

网站: phuongtran.format.com
Instagram: @deewonderer

 

供稿人: Allen Young
英译中: 李秋群

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Taking It to the Streets 如果墙会说话

February 13, 2019 2019年2月13日

The sun shines brightly in a cloudless, blue sky while the sound of waves crash on a nearby beach. We’re in Liwa, a surfer community in the Philippines, and since it’s a weekday the town is mostly deserted, other than a few locals lounging in the shade watching Archie Oclos paint his newest mural.

Despite the sleepy setting, Oclos isn’t here on vacation—he’s on a mission. He defines himself as a provocateur, using art as a medium to broadcast discontent and raise awareness of social issues. And it’s a life that has repercussions. In a country that doesn’t tolerate dissent well, his murals have resulted in violence against him and threats to his family. But that’s only inspired him to keep working.

晴空万里，艳阳高挂，海浪拍击着附近的沙滩。这里是里瓦 (Liwa)，菲律宾的一个冲浪目的地，因为是工作日，镇上一片冷清，只有几个当地人在树荫下看着 Archie Oclos 画着他的最新壁画作品。

尽管这样的环境令人昏昏欲睡，但 Oclos 不是来这里度假的，他有任务在身。他说自己是煽动者，以艺术为媒介，宣扬各种对社会问题的不满，提高人们的意识。在这个不欢迎异见的国家，他的生活自然不可能舒坦。因为创作壁画，他曾招来暴力对待，连他的家人也受到了威胁。但是，这只能进一步激励他去创作。

The profile of an indigenous character fills the center of the Liwa wall, rendered in a black silhouette with ochre line work, his bow and arrow stretching from the ground all the way to the two story roof. The character is a member of the Itas, considered to be the first inhabitants of Zambales, the province where Liwa is located. Stretching across the background in sea blue are rows of Baybayin calligraphy, a pre-colonial writing system that was used across the entire island nation at one point. A smaller line  in the upper left hand side, written in Tagalog, reads “You fight for the land and take good care of it.”

Oclos’s paintings generally focus on Filipino farmers and indigenous people. “They are the minority groups in our society,” he explains. “They are the most oppressed by military and the state forces, and there are lots of stories from the rural areas that need to be told.” A good example of the issues that he works on can be found in an installation at a sugar plantation called the Hacienda Luisita. It depicts a farmer hanging on a cross. The plantation, partially owned by the family of late former president Benigno Aquino III, has been dogged over the years with accusations of murder, land theft, and appalling conditions for its workers.

在里瓦一堵墙壁上，一个土著人物的轮廓填满了墙壁中央。以赭色的线稿描画，黑色的轮廓勾勒，他的弓箭从地面一直延伸至两层楼的屋顶。这个土著人物的原型是Itas族人，据说是里瓦所处的三描礼示省 (Zambales) 的第一批居民。横跨背景的是一行行海蓝色的比比贤文字（Baybayin），这是前殖民时代曾经在整个岛国使用过的文字。在左上方，有一排较小的加禄语写着“你要为你的土地斗争，并照料好这片土地。”

Oclos 的作品画的主要都是菲律宾农民和土著人民。他解释道：“他们是我们社会的少数群体，是受军事和国家势力欺压最严重的群体。在农村有很多需要讲述的故事。”在名为 Luisita（路易斯塔庄园）的甘蔗种植园，摆放着他的一个装置艺术作品，很好地体现了他所要表达的问题。这件作品描述的是一个农民挂在十字架上的情景。这片种植园的主人之一是已故前总统阿基诺三世的家族。多年来这里一直笼罩在谋杀、盗窃土地、剥削工人的指责阴影中。

Oclos comes from a family of farmers, and his parents migrated to Manila when he was nine years old. While his mother gave up farming to become a school teacher and worked for less than minimum wage, his father couldn’t find work, and they weren’t able to escape poverty. “We moved around Manila a lot,” the painter recounts. “Surviving on a day-to-day basis was  hard. There were times we went hungry, and sometimes we had only one meal of fish and rice per day.”

He wanted to be an artist since he was a little kid drawing dinosaurs and cartoons, but his parents pushed him to become a doctor or a lawyer. “They didn’t support my art because of the stereotype that artists don’t make money, that it’s just a hobby.” Although he studied hard and got a scholarship to a science high school, the bug never left him and when he left for college at age 16, he decided to study art. His fraternity helped him get another scholarship to study for free, and he supported himself by working as a photographer’s assistant.

After graduation he started working in video games. He taught himself digital painting and sent a portfolio to an online job posting, becoming a concept designer for EA Games and Disney. It wasn’t satisfying work though, and he found himself asking, “What is the purpose of art during trying times?”

Oclos 出身于一个农民家庭，9岁的时候随父母移居马尼拉。虽然他的母亲离开了农田，成为了一名学校教师，薪水低于最低工资，但父亲找不到工作，生活比较贫困。“我们在马尼拉经常要搬家。”这名画家回忆道，“这样难以为继的生活很艰苦。我们常常要挨饿，有时候一天也只能吃上一顿饭，只有鱼和米饭。

从小，他就喜欢画恐龙和漫画，梦想成为一名艺术家，但他的父母极力要求他成为医生或律师。“他们不支持我创作艺术，因为他们觉得做艺术家赚不了钱，艺术只能是一个爱好。”虽然他通过努力学习，拿到了一间科学高中的奖学金，但他始终心有不甘。16岁上大学时，他决定修读艺术专业。他的大学兄弟会帮助他获得了另一份奖学金，可以免掉学费，他再另外给一名摄影师兼职助手来赚取生活费。

毕业后，他进入视频游戏行业工作。他自学数码绘画，后来又将作品集发给一个在线招聘的帖子，然后就成为了美国艺电公司 (EA Games) 和迪斯尼 (Disney) 的概念设计师。但是，这仍然不是他想要的工作。他问自己，“在艰难的时候，艺术的作用是什么？”

In high school he used to draw political cartoons, and during college he was part of a protest art group. So once he tired of the video game world, he went straight into political street art. Almost immediately he caught the attention of the military. As part of a 2015 event held by Food Not Bombs, an organization that gives out free food to the poor, he painted a mural of an old woman with a crown of thorns made of bullets. It was accompanied by the words, “Stop Lumad Killings,” a phrase that was trending on Twitter, sparked by a spate of murders that year of tribal leaders of the Lumad people. The Lumad are the indigenous majority in the Philippines, located mainly in Mindanao, an island at the southern end of the country. Some have accused the military of supporting the group that killed the leaders as part of a campaign to clear the land for corporations. Today, the Lumad face continued oppression, and Mindanao is currently under martial law.

高中的时候，他常常画一些政治漫画，到了大学期间，他又加入了一个抗议艺术团体。所以每当他对视频游戏世界感到厌倦时，他就会马上投身政治街头艺术。但紧接着他就引起了军方的注意。2015 年，他加入了“要食物不要炸弹反战团体” (Food Not Bombs) 组织的一次活动。这个团体常常给穷人派发免费食物。在这次活动中，他画了一个年迈的女人，头上戴着用子弹制成的荆棘冠冕。旁边写着一句话：“Stop Lumad Killing” （停止在卢马德的杀戮），这是当时上了 Twitter趋势的标签，指的是当年接连发生的针对卢马德部落领袖的谋杀事件。卢马德是菲律宾国内的主要土著部落，主要位于南部的棉兰老岛。有人指责军方，称他们是谋杀者背后的支持力量，目的是给大集团企业清除障碍。今天，卢马德依然要面对持续不断的压迫，棉兰老岛目前也处于戒严。

Early one morning a short while later,  someone in plain clothes approached Oclos on his way to work and put him in a headlock, choking him. After wrestling for a few moments, the man let him go. “I could tell he was military because of his hair cut, his muscles, and the way he talked. There were three or four of them, and the others were guarding him,” Oclos says. The man told him he knew who he was and where he lived. “Then he gave me a brown envelope containing pictures of my girlfriend, who is now my wife, and a lot of my relatives: my grandparents, uncles, parents—even the kids, my cousins.”

It backfired, though, and rather than scare him off, it motivated him to paint even more: “It made me see the power of street art. Simple, two-dimensional art with no sound or moving images can still impact the system. It’s a way to speak up.”

Oclos 在上班途中突然被一个身穿便服的陌生男子用手卡住脖子，让他难以呼吸。争斗了几分钟后，那名陌生男子就放了他走。“我知道他是军队的人，他的发型、肌肉和说话的方式让我确信这一点。他们有三四个人，其他人就在旁边帮他守着。” Oclos 说道。那个男人说知道他是谁，也知道他住的地方。“然后，他给了我一个棕色信封，里面是我当时的女朋友，也是我现在的妻子的照片，还有我很多亲人的照片：我的爷爷奶奶、叔叔、父母，甚至还有小孩，我的表兄弟。”

然而，这次事件却并没有把他吓跑，而是促使他继续创作更多作品。“这让我看到了街头艺术的力量。这种简单、二维平面的艺术，没有声音或动图，却仍可以影响到社会。这是人们发声的一种方式。”

Recently, Oclos created his biggest political work to date, tackling the subject of extra-judicial killings here. After winning a Thirteen Artists award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, one of the nation’s highest recognitions in the arts, he painted a mural on one of their outdoor walls. It depicted a dead body, rendered in black lines on a white background. He says the more than 20,000 strokes that make up the piece represent the amount of people estimated to have been killed in the country’s drug war led by the president, Rodrigo Duterte.

近日，Oclos 创造了他至今最大幅的政治主题作品，主题是当地法外处决的问题，并获得了菲律宾文化中心颁发的 Thirteen Artists 大奖——菲律宾艺术界最高奖项之一。随后，他又在一幢户外墙上绘画了一幅壁画作品，用黑色线条在白色背景上画了一具尸体。他说，这幅作品共画了2万多笔，代表了人们所估计在该国毒品战争中被杀害的人的数量。这场毒品战争是由菲律宾总统罗德里戈·达特 (Rodrigo Duterte) 所发起的。

While taking a break from painting the mural, an elderly woman approached Oclos, saying that the piece was inappropriate, that it was overly negative. “I tried to convince her that we should see the face of death in order to appreciate the value of life,” Oclos argues. “Nowadays killing is normalized, which conditions people into thinking it’s okay to kill people. But it’s not.”

休息的时候，一位年迈的妇女上前跟Oclos说画这样的画不合适，太过消极了。“我试图说服她，我们应该直面死亡，才能体会生命的价值。” Oclos解释道，“如今杀戮被常规化，让人们慢慢对杀戮这个问题麻木起来。但这是不对的。”

Instagram: @tatak_a

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Photographer: Ed Enclona
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
Additional Images Courtesy of Archie Oclos

Instagram: @tatak_a

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
摄影师: Ed Enclona
英译中: 李秋群
附加图片由 Archie Oclos 提供

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