Shame

My inspiration came from my experience of enuresis, which was a painful and humiliated memory to me. The wet bed sheet, whispering of neighbors, laugh of children who played in the park, all of these made me feel angry. Was it really an unbearable and shameful thing? With this query, I interviewed children at the age from 8 to 10 and asked them three questions: What’s your view to enuresis? Do you wet the bed? Are you willing to be friend with those who wet the bed? Then I did questionnaire survey to 20 males and 20 females at the age of about 15 and proposed three questions: What kind of thing is enuresis do you think? Are you willing to be friend with those who wet the bed? If you wet the bed, what will you do? The answer showed the group at 15 years old was more averse to wet the bed than the group at the age of 8-10, which made me think of another question, do people feel shame easier along with increase of age? After received interview and questionnaire survey results, the interviewed children generally considered urine as disgusting, I put the focus on urine, did urine made people feel shamed? I gradually magnified urine and saw numerous beautiful crystals, the pee body of Kiki Smith gave me enlightenment, the scattering beads on the ground was a naked woman squatted down to urinate or urinated; the yellow glass beads scattered at the ground behind her body. She did not choose to use urine or liquid to express her work, but used yellow beads and gave me more imaginary space, which also made me feel strong sense of shame. Another artist that enlightened me was Kathleen Ryan, her work Bad Fruit used various gems to manifest those bad fruits, “these sculptures are both beautiful and pleasant, but they are accompanied with ugliness and uneasiness”. The strong contrast of beautifulness and ugliness left me deep impression and let me think. After further investigation, I found the main reason for enuresis was the brain nerve cell had problem when transmitting information, then lead to enuresis. I used elastic string to simulate nerve brain and did knitting and used transparent 3d printing technology to print urine molecule, I think transparent material seemed clean but could contain many connotations. I wanted the work get rid of the original appearance of urine and present in front of everyone in a more beautiful and romantic way, let the audience think what is the essence of enuresis humiliation. Knitted them together with nerve cells, and knitted them on the C letter trousers and let the model wear it and walk, rhetorically ask the audience, is enuresis shameful?