EXPERIMENTATION LOG — Representation of Chinese (and more broadly, East Asian) bodies and culture

Aim

How might I bring in cultural identifiers / aspects of Chinese/Asian culture into the cyborg/witch characters so that a more diverse and inclusive deviance can be realised? 

How might I find ways to represent queerness and Chinese/Asian identity through a cyborg-witch body/entity?

Precedents / context

As a very delayed follow-up to Zoe's feedback in Stuvac about considering the cultural specificity of monsters, I wanted to start exploring this and incorporating references to my Chinese heritage. I think I was putting this off because it seems scary and I wasn't sure where to start. I had also participated in Carmen's yokai workshop, which was super fun and her visual references were such compelling depictions of Japanese monsters and representations of anthropomorphised, non-traditional "bodies". 

This inspired me to just do something, start somewhere with this experiment. I pulled together some useful references (specifically from Chinese artists and culture) that helped me identify a kind of visual language, particularly in relation to the body and how it is represented or adorned. 

Chinese Peking Opera came up as a rich source of visual inspiration — the exaggerated features, movement and makeup,  and even the vocal stylings. The characters and their bodies have a more-than-human, mythical air about them, which is rather useful to me. I also remember vaguely watching it when I was young, which I think is a nice personal connection and storytelling element. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtV3iAuYN48

I was also looking at more contemporary representations of Chinese and East Asian culture, and found really beautiful work in the fashion and photography space. Chinese, London-based photographer Weishan Hu creates carefully arranged tableau vivant scenes of postmodern China. The detail to the composition, arrangement of bodies, use of colour, props and clothing is all very culturally specific, and creates sort of uncanny, self-aware scenes of a highly controlled but vibrant nation-state. 
https://www.instagram.com/wwei33/
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/weishan-hu-photography-itsnicethat-120919

Betty Liu is a Melbourne-based fashion designer who explores the objectification and fetishisation of Chinese culture (the qipao, food), using clothing as a medium to re-represent and reclaim her culture. She and Jess Brohier, an Asian Australian photographer, collborated on a photo series called "Eating the Other" which subverts both traditional Chinese and western clothing conventions to create surreal, inexplicable scenes of contemporary Chinese bodies. 
https://www.instagram.com/b.e.t.t.y.l.i.u/
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/betty-liu-jess-brohier-eating-the-other-work-fashion-261118

I wanted to keep all these visually rich, powerful and playful references in mind to conceive my own cyborg-witch monster bodies, or faces. And make sure that I am referencing Chinese culture in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to me. 

Process / methods

• I just started drawing. I automatically started (and sometimes stopped) with the face because that feels like more a character. Played with human/animal features to hint at a fairytale-mythology context, "mutated" features e.g. three pairs of eyes. 
• For the cultural references, I tried to bring them in with the eyes, eyebrows and noses — some which worked better than others. Also colour/"makeup" as a consideration, playing with the placement of "blush". 

Reflection on action

• I think, for a first attempt at something I had (and still am) been very intimated to do, it was ok! I don't draw on my heritage much in my creative work, and I think feel pressure to get it right for myself and others who share my culture/experience. 

• I set this experiment up for myself as very low-stakes, non-committal and short. While there are some potentially interesting compositions and ideas to explore further and iterate, I think doing this experiment log now is actually super helpful in allowing me to understand and accept that it should be a process. It's also helping me identify that I was getting a feel for how to do it, what outcomes I liked and didn't like, which feels more insightful and productive than trying to make as many faces as I could. 

• I stopped at these six sketches because I was getting a bit frustrated, which was probably a good call. Some of the faces were very similar to the illustration I'd done for the ID cards, which felt pointless. But I think there's a lot of unexplored scope in pulling from the references more deeply, trying to realise different configurations of the body, and even incorporating more cyborgian elements. 

Reflection for action

As mentioned, I think there is a lot more scope to explore this intersection of Cyborg-Witch-Chineseness. If I do shift back into more worldbuilding, I think looking at props and objects could also be quite interesting and fruitful, especially as character design can be hard. In a workshop setting objects would be nice to have for participants to interact with/speculate around too. 

Especially with the contemporary photographic references, they are a form/visualisation of worldbuilding in and of themselves, so look at /analyse them more closely and develop ideas from the questions and cues that might arise.

Also with the tracery experiments, consider how you might be able to bring in more cultural elements into the generative worldbuilding. Is it inputting different, more culturally specific words? Might you combine these two experiments/prompts more visually? 

References