Mediha Ting
Bow Arts Trust
183 Bow Rd
London
E3 2SJ
+44-790-998-5521 (Mobile)
About Artist
I am a London Based Taiwanese/Chinese artist, focus on visual arts. Since graduating from the Byam Shaw School of Art in 2000 I have engaged in independent studio practice and research in addition to participating in more than 30 group and 6 solo shows internationally. Last year my work was exhibited at the ScopeBasel 2009 in Switzerland.
My upbringing as a Taiwanese/Chinese-Muslim raised and educated in many vastly different cultures, has hugely influenced my works; reflecting the collected thought, memories of places, people and events I have experienced on my travels, I investigate perceptions of cultural identity, the relationship between the inner world and urban built environment and the state of consciousness and the subconscious.
Early last year I produced a few series of works that interact with the environment as they are a ‘polytych’ of paintings. One of them is The Edge of Realities Series that suggests a patchwork of memories, dreams and fragments of realities that, far from being stitched together, remain separate, broken expressions of the divergent and contradictory experiences of the modern-day nomad.
In my recent work The Realm of Perception, I started to scrutinize aspects of duality, paradox, conflict, desire and guilt by paintings indulging in intense colours, revealing and hinting at secrets, sexuality and a darker consciousness. The act of overt confession in Western style contradicts my Chinese upbringing which compels me to conceal them. They are hidden underneath layers of patterns made from giant stencils of hybrid Chinese/Western motifs and numerous partially visible layers to build utmost complex visuals.
My continuous explorations into cultural identity and its conflicts led me to subjects related to philosophy and psychoanalysis, some subjects originally posed by Sigmund Freud, in particular his research into dreams, the subconscious, duality and repression. In my Polarize self and new works in progress {unfinished no images} , I uproot the traditional characters from fairy-tale and place them in situations/setting that reflect current cultures and with a religious undertones – images from news, music videos, video games, raising questions about how pop culture, globalisation and cyber culture construct/deconstruct value and perception.
The Icon-luminous Series is a sequence of paintings, sculptures and installations that are highly charged with tension, ironic humour and sensuality, whist at the same time retaining a certain ambiguity and luminosity in terms of colour use and forms. Apart from rendering the tension between desire and guilt, it also represents the constant battle within. This series investigates three main areas; firstly the relationship between cultural values and the subconscious. Secondly, the new formation of varying cyber texts, chat languages and slang. Thirdly, capturing the time which is shown in the layers and scripts.
