Typographic Portrait Research

I am using various artists and mediums as reference for my artworks.

 

Takato Yamamoto

Vampire series, 2008

During class consultation, Ina suggested that I explore a dark, macabre theme for “ice queen” and I feel like Takato Yamamoto’s artwork resonates with me and in line with what I want to achieve. However, I’ll be referencing Yamamoto for “agender” instead and switched the original idea for agender with “ice queen”.

Rib Of Hermaphrodite series, 2008

I love how he blends morbid, grotesque elements with erotic beauty, creating artworks that is visually alluring yet revolting at the same time.

His artworks are rich with recurring symbols such as an eyeball, the moon, and a white rose.

Jennifer Mehigan // Vaporwave/Seapunk

I’m extremely fascinated with the Vaporwave (specifically Seapunk) micro culture, partly because my friends are influenced by this during the 2010s (still is, to a certain extent).

Think 90s aesthetics combined with sea-inspired colours such as aqua and all things oceanic. Incidentally, the Pantone colour(s) of 2016 is baby blue and baby pink.

Liquid Crystal, 2013

Jennifer Mehigan is a Singaporean artist who coined the term “cybersensuality”, infusing esoteric terms such as desires in artificial inorganic forms. Her artworks are not what a conventional art student would like, but this very offbeat quirk and unapologetic irony in her works is what I hope to emulate for my typographic portrait project.

Hannah Höch // Dadaism

Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919

The raw composition of Höch’s work is what attracted me to Dadaism (and for one time in the 90s most of the artwork of Reader’s Digest’s articles were collages, which piqued my interest at a young age because I do not know whether they are done digitally or painstakingly cut and pasted from various resources).

 

Shirin Neshat

Untitled, Women of Allah series

Neshat’s self-portrait evokes a powerful reaction in me; her struggle to identify herself as a woman and the complexities of their (women’s) existence in modern Muslim societies, is akin to my despair of people associating Malays as synonymous to being Muslims, as this is not the case sometimes.

This association often cause contemporary Malay-Muslims to disparage centuries-old customs that is deem blasphemous, and presents a barrier for the Orang Asli of Malaysia to be accepted fully as Bumiputera (sons of the motherland) as they are not Muslims hence they are not “truly” Malay.

 

Poetry // Khalil Gibran

I have a penchant for high diction poetry and the beauty of being able to describe something mundane into something palatable to ears when recited.  I especially like this line from Sand and Foam:

“A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand”

I find this interesting and will deconstruct it and use materials to give new meaning to the poem and for my typographic portrait.

 

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