Xiá Sylvie Rondeau

My work has always been an exploration into my Chinese/adopted/girl identities. In high school I focused a lot on family and comfort. Pieces I created back then were very literal in a sense, as I used portraiture to express my feelings. My work wasn't as conceptual as it is now. 

In the Spring of 2017 I was finally enrolled in a course for which I could explore my identity in full using art from various mediums. It was the first time since high school that I made the conscious decision to invest my time and energy once again into my topic of choice. I didn't do much of that during my time at Emerson College and spent more on the theoretical courses related to my unique major and interests rather than the art practices. This class was a turning point for me as it lead to the creation of my ongoing project You Left Me Early (YLME).

The pieces that helped launch YLME consisted of a film, a neon sign, and a Rondeau poem. In the summer of 2017 I added a mural/painting installation. Although I wasn't trying to make my piece titled, "How I Feel About the One-Child Policy" (2017) a performance art piece, looking back I feel as though it could've been one. In fact it very well may have been a stronger piece if it had been. "The Release" (2017) video records the most cathartic moment of this mural project from my Studio Investigations course at Massachusetts College of Art & Design (MassArt).

I spent thirty-something hours locked in my studio at MassArt creating the painting, copying each character in a letter written by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on controlling the country's population growth onto a massive paper mural, with the intent of defacing the final product once it was finished. This task seemed easy when I first came up with it--after all, how hard could it be to just write the letter out in its entirety, enlarged, on a giant piece of paper? Well, very.

The primary document itself titled, "An Open Letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Controlling the Population Growth in China" from September 25, 1980, contains 2,925 characters in total. Yes, I counted them. Before I began working on this project I had already decided where I wanted to showcase the final piece. It was in the Fenway Room at MassArt on one of its walls that was 24.5’ long and about 10’ tall. I’m no mathematician, but the piece required me to become one. After measuring my space in Fenway, I set the parameters of my mural to be 20’x8’. From there I had to figure out the configuration and layout of the characters. I knew I wanted the piece to be huge. I needed it to be huge.

I don’t speak Chinese, but luckily I know how to write characters. If I hadn’t the mural would’ve been impossible. Copying the strokes of such intricate and measured figures isn’t easy without knowledge on how to do so. As a Chinese person without Chinese culture I feel I have so much to prove with my art in order for it to be taken seriously.

When I was working on this mural I was very fortunate to have a Chinese mentor who helped me a great deal in navigating the history, politics, and aesthetics of contemporary Chinese art and culture. Although anyone with any language background can view my work and appreciate how it looks, I’m concerned with the experience of native Chinese speakers when they view my art. Because they are able to read the characters, the way I wrote and structured the letter was extremely significant. As an outsider of a society that I desperately try to inject myself into, the last thing I wanted was to create an ill-informed piece that made no sense to native speakers.

As I continue working on YLME I want to add more video--ideally some interactive media, dabble in fashion, study Chinese propaganda art and printmaking, and explore performance. I would love to collaborate more with Asian American artists, especially other adopted/Chinese/girls, to raise awareness on the subject of international adoption, identity, and mental health.