Jacquie Meng: Statement

My works explore exaggerated and self conceptualised self portraiture in a way that considers arranging the self, objects and landscapes in a way that is carnivalesque and grotesque.  The idea of the carnival liberates us from the constraints of everyday life, allowing for a fluid exchange of identities and roles.  This idea resonates deeply with the diasporic experience, where identity is often fragmented and multifaceted. I also consider site-specificity, and how the displacement of cultural objects impacts identity formation within diasporic communities. I believe that arts relationship to place can reshape perceptions of identity, and thus paintings not only exist as static objects but engage with the context of their display. 

A large consideration in the making of my work is ‘thing-power’, a concept that explores agency within objects, and how non-human entities can possess agency in determining meaning.  In these works the self is a clock, the eyes are pool balls, the dresser mirror is a portal to a playground, the pool table is a groomed garden with patterns of i-ching coins.  I am interested in the way that patterns travel across time and space and have spiritual meaning or idiosyncratic ones… or both. Scattered in my work are patterns from Han Dynasty tombstones, traditional fortune telling mechanisms and prints on fabric and clothing.