Longfei Zhao
Apr 1, 2020
Hedy Zhang is a great friend of mine, we have known each other for years. They were the first candidate in my mind when I saw this assignment of interviewing an artist. They were not only an outstanding artist, but also a responsible and conscientious international citizen. Their artistic creation is full of discussion of human nature, questioning to this era and reflection on the society. It was my pleasure that they could accept this interview invitation, and we had a great exploration on them, their works and their ideas on community engagement. Hedy firstly introduced herself. They are a Chinese female performance artist, has been influenced by their mother, who worked as a reporter for the police major crimes unit and later on went to pursue a career in psychology. In their early experiences, Hedy worked as a young journalist, interviewing many Chinese civilians about their daily life, which enabled them to observe and reflect on the myriad scenes of social reality and public life. Then Hedy took media major at Ohio University, hoping to become a professional journalist. Later, Hedy realized that working in media industry, most of the time they would have to represent the perspective of institutions and they would not have freedom pursuing social justice and human expression. So, they quit their major and embarked on two years of solo travel and freelance writing. During the trip, they traveled alone through 17 cities in the United States, Mexico and China, and got to know different people. Meanwhile, Hedy began to conduct an in-depth questioning of the medical structure and system of curing mental illness in China and the United States, resulting in a series of artworks that explore the attitude against artists having psychiatric issues. In 2018, Hedy enrolled in photography major at Parsons School of Design, and then transferred to the Fine Art major to start doing behaviorist performance art. Their work usually creates single or multiple personas that interconnect and overlap in gender roles and identities, and in direct dialogue and exchanges with the audience. The artworks encourage the public to discuss issues of gender, human rights, and identity that structural environments try to suppress. Then I asked about their views on community engagement and how it got reflected in their works. Hedy dissected this topic in detail. They thought, in broader definition, human world divides into two big communities as western world and eastern world. Artists usually view these two communities separately. That’s the part Hedy is challenging in their artworks, which is disappearing communities and mixing communities. This means to break the invisible wall between communities and let people meet each other who come from “different” communities. Because Hedy believes that abjection exists while different communities label each other. And they hope different audiences would know each other more and recognize each community well. Thus, Hedy doesn’t technically “engage” with any communities, but they always tried to push their audiences from different background to engage with each other. Then, community engagement is like a result which Hedy observed in their artworks. They didn’t use this “doctrine” to create the artworks, but they hope that would be a kind of action which happen in the audiences’ lives after Hedy’s performance. And that is also the reason why Hedy opposed the idea that imposes labels on artists and imposes a community to which they belong. They believe they don’t belong or serve for any community; the opposite way would actually make them feel quite lonely. However, they agree with the idea that “put away communities but only see lives”. This means, no matter which gender, which social class they come from, what is the skin color, the age, the nationality, etc., it is always just a human being, an alive body who will feel, think, love, suffer, hate, etc., as same as everyone else. Talking about the role artist should play in the community, in Hedy’s opinion, it depends on different artist and in what way each audience appreciate the artworks. “It’s just like art as an object works differently in different people’s lives.” Hedy said, “but generally, artists are like strangers (in audience’s life), such as house cleaner, baby sitter, teacher, president, doctor, etc.” We later talked about the challenge Hedy has met or is meeting currently. They thought the current period was the biggest challenge they have met in their arts experience. However, they guessed they might meet even more bigger one in the future. Right now, they started to create artworks to challenge psychology, education and institution by redefine mental patience and Chinese female artist. Obviously, their artistic language is too hard to accept for current public. They were even forced by NYPD to delete one of their artworks they posted on Instagram. As the result of they rejected, they were forced to go to a mental hospital. Hedy has been assaulted by some Chinese audiences online because they thought Hedy’s artworks was against Chinese culture. Those reflects that Hedy’s art was not accepted by both American power dynamic and traditional Chinese culture. These bring Hedy much fears. The biggest challenge now for Hedy is they are in insecure situation. They began to doubt themselves. Then Hedy shared their thoughts on world’s current trends. Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. And it comes true especially for online right now. Hedy thought in the future everyone would be hurt by cyber bully for 15 minutes or even longer. The next revolution may happen online. The internet world may cause much more danger and hatred. And many people will get suffered. Hedy felt really sad that our next generations may live in a suffering mental world, or it would cause them refuse to improve or think more. Maybe this is already started. History may always repeat that after we enjoy the benefits of one thing, we will get hurt of over using it. It seems like that is how human learn their lesson. And for the art field, Hedy wasn’t optimistic. They felt the best time of art is past already, or in some way to say, the best time of art has never come. Art reflects or is manipulated by the history. As an artist, as a “nobody” (I don’t think so Hedy, you are not some “nobody”), we could only continue to adapt in the trend. Hedy’s recent artworks mostly embody Chinese communities. “I AM SLUT” is a performance that they wanted to bring up a series of question, why Chinese women can’t speak dirty words, who educated Chinese women, how Chinese women identity dirty words like slut, and how to redefine dirty words in Chinese etc. In this world, Hedy used western world categories of Chinese dirty words and transferred them in Chinese, then developed in jokes on censorship power. Hedy wanted to encourage Chinese women to release from their traditional education which told them to act like a gentle elegant one-typed woman. Meanwhile, they wanted to observe the power of Chinese dirty words and destroy the lack of Chinese performance by Chinese artist in New York City. The inspiration came from one of Hedy’s friends. One day a friend told Hedy her Korean boyfriend thought 24-year-old and up women who didn’t give a birth should be thought as failure and shame. Hedy was really shocked and angry, but it seems that friend couldn’t really change that idea at that time. Hedy usually found many friends of theirs couldn’t escape from traditional education of this world. It is not because they haven’t realized, it is because they need to live with those people who don’t realize. This is a long-term argument in Hedy’s art life. Hedy made many personas and humorous in their artworks to challenge and encourage the community they love deeply to think. But they don’t know if it is the right time to continue to do this. They started to think that they need to pause the expression and listening from the community for now. Hedy believed there would be a sign to tell them what they were going to do in the future. And now I am waiting. Hedy hoped their works act as the catalyst for raising awareness of feminism and appreciation for young Chinese artist’s works. They thought the most beautiful part in their works is people from different communities meet together in their artworks, and their artworks can be a little place for them to confirm each other’s existence in this world, no matter online or in their live performance. The most powerful thing was not the performance itself, it was what happened around and after the performance. That builds a community within all communities. And that makes Hedy feel really thankful. Hedy lastly talked about their future plan. They planned to do voluntary works in developing countries, engage with people who live under need-based line more and listen to their voices.