Introduction
Auguste Rodin The Thinker (c. 1880)
Artist: Auguste Rodin
Year: 1880
Type: Bronze
Location: Musée Rodin, Paris
Dimensions: H. 71.5 cm
The HongKonger
Artist: Teka YIU, Lung Fai
Tabitha LI, Cheuk Wing
WONG, Wai Kwan
Year: 2011
Type: living creature
Dimensions: H. 73.5 cm
Originally, 'The Thinker' - exhibited in Copenhagen in 1888 as 'The Poet', it is a part of “The Gates of Hell”, created by Auguste Rodin.
And our art work is called “The HongKonger”, which is trying to represent the experience of HongKongers. There are several similarities and differences between those two art works. First, they both are with the male subject. Also they are showing us that they are thinking hardly and trying to understand the reality of life. Furthermore, we are also trying to depict a man in sober thought who are battling with a powerful internal struggle
However, there are some differences. ‘The Thinker’ is sitting nude upon a stone. ‘The HongKonger’ is not only sitting with clothes on air, but also carries a lot of items on his body, each item is representing a symbol. Also, different items have different meaning to the ‘The HongKonger’. Although both art works are thinking hardly, but ‘The HongKonger’ is only thinking about how to survive in the modern Hong Kong society, not as ‘the thinker’ is thinking the meaning of life and death.
Our art work is representing a HongKonger who need to deal with a lot of challenges in his/her whole life time. However, ‘The HongKoner’ is also showing the struggling that why each HongKonger need to spend his/her whole life time achieve many challenges.
Love is an vital part in our lives. Since dress can be used as a symbol of women. We use dress represents women affairs always get the attention from man. As a Chinese saying goes, ‘every successful man have women’s support at the back.’ It is believed that although is not successful, man always concern about women in their entirely lives.
We put Hang Seng index at the crest, as we found that heat beats are similar to index in the stock market. As we know, Hong Kong is an international finical centre, many people, namely businessmen, students or even housewives are interested in stock transaction. So, if there is any increasing or decreasing in stock market, it will definitely affect the heart beat of Hong Kong people.
Tie is a necessary item in a suit. Wearing suit usually give us an impression of successful. In a suit, a tightly tie not only represents formal and professional, but also gives us stressful. Picture that the tie is rounding your neck, the pressure is so heavy and unavoidable. If we pursuing in wearing suit, we cannot ignore the stress from the tie.
If diamond is the favour of women, watch certainly is one of the items that men addict to. Some people say that men love watches because these can represent the privileged position or economic status. A popular Hong Kong artist Eason Chan once use watches as the theme of a song. He tries to show how people put effort in pursuing money and power but forget other things else, namely time. Ironically, the original purpose of wearing watch is for knowing the time, however, people nowadays use it as a symbol of privileged position. They use a life of time to pursuit what they want but ignore the time showed from watch.
Graduation certificate is an important thing in many people life because it almost represents our career. Many people say that graduation certificate is a guarantee of getting a job. Although there are some exceptional cases that low qualification but high salary job, people prefer to get a high qualification in order to ensure they can have a better future.
Since the value of Hong Kong dollars remain unchanged, but the China RMB keeps raise in a rapid rate, Hong Kong dollars seems to be a cheaper currency now. However, many goods in Hong Kong were purchase from mainland; therefore it was a main reason that makes inflation. Here we have the glasses that covered with RMB, it makes people only see RMB, represents Hong Kong people only value on RMB rather than HKG, USD and so on.
Every Hongkongers usually have a same target that is to get a dream house. However, the price of the lands and the flats keeps a constant rising rate. We can say that we are working for the property owners for our whole life; a home becomes a burden for all of us. Therefore, we have a hat that built an apartment on the top of it. It symbolized this house burden in our life with an apartment suppressing our hat.
The HongKonger holds a pacifier in the mouth, which represents the HongKongers need to take care of the kids besides those pressures. To have a child, we should input the time and money for him/her. Besides the physical requirements, we should spend money on the education, hobbies, and time for conversation to ensure him/her has a healthy life. Once we have a child, the responsibility will never end. Therefore this burden will follow us until we were died.
Transportation is a great expenditure in the Hongkongers’ daily life. Since our transportation network was monopolized by several corporations, the controls the price of the mass transportation methods. In these few years, the transport fee persists on a high level, and the fuel cost also rises rapidly according to the shortage of fuel supply in the world. Therefore, neither mass transport or to own a car were not a wise choice in Hong Kong. Wheels under the HongKonger’s foot were the symbols that the Hongkongers wants to own a car, may be they also wants to have a wheel on the foot. Therefore they can travel to everywhere with no constrictions.
Finally, the Hongkonger sitting on air because when to show that many people are fighting to the above items alone and without support. May be this is a traditional Chinese culture. In Chinese society, men is powerful and the main support of the whole family. Men usually think that women are useless relatively so that they need to bear all the thing alone. Although times flies and the society changes a lot, it is believed that men still have some kind of concept leave in their mind.
we use black and white to represent a mood that although some hongkongers already have a material life. they have a great car, a high salary job, and a big beautiful house. In fact, however, their life are not colourful, because those materials are not exactly they really want.
Conclusion
All in all, in this project through different symbols to represent different challenges that each hongkoner need to deal with. Furthermore, we want to show that all hongkongers, we are also part of them, just like 'the thinker' always need to struggle with a lot of problems. However, we not have a chose that although we don’t want a complicated life, we still need to spend our whole life time for pursuing a material life. This is the internal struggling which we are talking about.
excellent.
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