Hearsay

Abstract

The inspiration for my artwork comes from my life experience and cultural background. There is an idiom in China, “daotingtushuo,” which explains that “most people’s impressions of a certain person/thing are easily affected by irresponsible rumors.” In general, people are more likely to add their personal and emotional perspectives to a certain person/thing when describing it to others. After observation and research, the rumor propagation process needs a medium—the emotions of a human being. To materialize this concept of the emotions, I related color psychology to my work. Based on psychological research, I introduced five different colors to represent human emotions and characteristics. For instance, I represent pride as cyan, greed as orange, sadness as blue, anger as red, and envy as yellow. I am trying to relay a message to my audiences to make them consider how to effectively deal with various negative emotions. Moreover, people should pursue responsible judgment and opinions when dealing with rumors. This thesis work includes five pieces of jewelry and an installation. Each piece of jewelry represents one typical human emotion. Different forms, colors, and techniques were used to illustrate the characteristics of the emotions and their effects on message spreading/rumor. In addition, in terms of techniques, not only did I employ metalworking, I also introduced a new technique that uses print-making to explore textures on acrylic paper.