Journey of a yellow man no.13: Fragmented bodies/shifting ground 1999
Performance/video installation
September 1999

Since 1992 Lee Wen has appeared as the Yellow Man in a series of installations and performances in which he covers his body with yellow paint. As a Chinese, the yellow paint exaggerates his ethnic identity. However rather than suggesting a straightforward embrace of Chinese-ness, Lee Wen's take on ethnicity is a sophisticated and playful exploration of how the complex issue of identity is read according to location. Throughout the Yellow Man series Lee Wen has made references to socio-political issues in which his ‘yellow’ colour takes on local meanings and interpretations. Lee Wen says: ‘We find familiarity and strangeness in every place we go. Our awareness is sharpened in new locations and experiences. Yet it remains difficult to keep a constant vigil on our perceptions so that we do not fall prey to false consciousness and prejudices, nor become victims of propaganda from the market and the media, and other distortions.’

Artist's statement:

Cultural production exists in dialectical relationship between society and the individual as also between the artist and the community. We all exists within a social system which is seemingly internally coherent but may not be easily translated outside. Our interpretations of the world helps us to take possible actions to create changes for a positive direction. However the situation changes as one moves from one location to another. We live in a complex transnational and global meetings, mixings and clashings of differing cultural perceptions at an increasing rate and pace never seen before.

Each of us exists within a certain axis of cultural and historical location. Are we able to see clearly where we came from, where we are now or where its leading us? One finds familiarity and strangeness in every place we go. Our awareness is sharpened in new locations and experiences. Yet it remains difficult to keep a constant vigilance on our perceptions so that we do not fall prey to false consciousness and prejudices nor become victims to propaganda of the market and power of the media and other distortions.

Journeys were taken in search of something other than where we came from or as inevitabilities in order to continue our existence and growth as our identities takes us. Place and time shifted as much as our perceptions and consciousness are affected by them. Once again, a systematic chaos, a dangerous trial, endless accumulation, mindless consumption, oppression, abuses, haunting, relentless...

The sun was rising over the river-side where we waited with last night's revellers by the anchored ferry. The sky was turning brighter as birds began to greet the morning with their songs, I rejected all manner of intoxications and watched the performance of lovers communicating their inner desires through pure and simple actions, faded meanings and re-solidified aspirations. I bid unemotional goodbyes to all beneath the shower of love and left, to experience unexpected rebirths again yet again. Closing the door, did I not leave those nightmares behind? Those mistaken glories, re-invented into memory, imagined as histories. How many times? How many times more?

- Lee Wen 1999