China Mask is a project that reflects Scotty So’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the déjà vu of the SARs crisis in Hong Kong 2003 through the materiality of porcelain. To him, wearing a mask is just a normal measure to prevent spreading sickness to others from the 2003 SARs crisis, but somehow there is such a huge debate and fear in the mask during the current pandemic. Masks have become a symbol of fear. The Asian hype as described by the artist as some kind of mysterious Asian medicine with a racial assault toward the Asian community.
Through this project, Scotty So plays with the similarity in the colours of the surgical and the N95 masks with celadon ceramics. Through the process of making porcelain china masks, he finds beauty and irony in the fragile material as safety gear. He turned the respirator masks into a functional wormwood incense holder, drawing connections with the respirator masks as protection from the dust hazard of ceramic making to the protection from tear gas by the police forces in protests around the world.
gold, clear glaze and Qihua glaze on porcelain, wormwood
16 x 9 x 8 cm
Finalist
Judges of the 20th Anniversary Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Dr Lara Strongman (Director Curatorial and Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), Joanna Capon OAM (Art Historian, Curator and Industrial Archaeologist) and Jenny Kee AO (Artist and Fashion Designer).
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