https://xiasrondeau.art/working daily 0.75 2018-10-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137509536-8I8W0WKPZ0H0M3MDSH54/10.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137518119-6YR3MYRCS76CGJJREH6C/3296406974_f3b89fefd0_z.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137506736-4NROEYIEJ7Q0UBAGUY34/1966-EcoleNanyang.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137519306-JTXLQLD54Q1MA417A66C/3356995606_a78039457a_b.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137518348-HO2QMWO7V6H4LAEG7ZNO/cc58d49dc7.jpg ongoing projects - Democracy Wall in Beijing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137532134-5MWZKA3GJREQVM524CJ4/CwfJHyYUQAANpi_%5B1%5D.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518111373791-NTRD00N5TP1L0UEU02QR/WIN_20170607_18_02_49_Pro.jpg ongoing projects - Renderings of initial ideas for mural https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518111326097-QQTBTR9XA2FPWTS7OEO7/Dazibao_Paintsplatter.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518111306410-6QVK3TZ605A0TBN8STFV/YLME_Gallery.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518111322659-4FRRABC9RY6MPJ774SCK/MassArt_YLME_Window_Summer2017.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518039152194-Z1AI6GHJS6MW392VK9OH/IMG_0639.JPG ongoing projects - You Left Me Early (Ongoing) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137031511-B142OIX1AN0DT0E33S6T/A_.Jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137030415-N8L75ESQDTTZN9KOLYF6/B_.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137066324-X5ASHNYBES34246SNS1F/C_.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518137064648-P2KOMHY653PR5XTOKZ1O/D_.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518042143472-DBLMHMRKYSLDS1ABAG8X/YLME_Fenway_Room_Summer2017.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518111672617-H10TMFYSMWVYF2GB47O6/YLME_Fenway_Room_Summer2017.jpg ongoing projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1562549082982-MGHUV6X73WWPMMBU4WNI/dawn24.jpg ongoing projects https://xiasrondeau.art/whitenoise daily 0.75 2019-07-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517949815052-ZDEVXB2992N167FHMX33/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - Turn Back Kid Take 1 (2016) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517958151525-4A8G0DKQBIRY3I9ZXV84/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - Drive By (2016) This is an experimental film I shot using an iPhone 4. In 2016 I went on a summer road trip with a dear friend of mine, who I'd just met, from Boston to Detroit. "Drive By" is an homage to our adventure, our friendship, and our mutual interest in funky art. It's a short compilation of some of my favorite moments cut from hours and hours of clips I collected that tells a story of youthful bliss, excitement, and wandering. Someday I will revisit the library of videos from our road trip, but for now I will let this piece stand on its own as a snapshot of one of the fondest moments in my life. As the name suggests, the film depicts the way in which the snapshots of our lives roll into one another in flawless unison. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518041041361-LQ7PCZIPZ824NIB6ZZ9W/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - "Art et Cinéma" (edit Picassa) "Art et Cinéma (edit Picassa)" [2016] is a humorous and playful short film that takes a poke at gender politics in art and our obsession with names. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517949865233-D8LKOTDFE9BVR6U5XXBF/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - Refugee Crisis (2017) "Refugee Crisis" is the experimental film from a performance art piece about the Syrian refugee crisis. I worked with a group of peers at Emerson College to create an installation that was a political commentary on our relationship to and understanding of ongoing violence in other countries. It questions and explores the role of mass media in shaping the way we react and feel towards global issues. We often times forget that behind these depictions of violence and suffering are real people. We've grown so accustomed to viewing suffering as part of our every day intake of news or entertainment that we forget that a physical manifestation of it actually exists. To create a feeling of urgency and anxiety, we created a single tent in the middle of a room under which we crammed our entire audience. We forced them to lay down, almost on top of one another, in uncomfortable positions. As they looked up to the ceiling of the tent, we projected this film down onto them, blasting the audio to fully immerse them in the experience. We forget that the people we see on TV living in conflict are more than just their situations. The word "refugee" comes with many assumptions and constructs that take away from the humanity of the people we label as such. The video ends with footage shot by one of my group members in Germany. It's from a documentary they were working on about Syrians who have arrived in Europe, and the process of regaining normalcy after experiencing extreme circumstances. Not many of us know what it's like to be a refugee, or an undocumented person--what it's like to be displaced and driven out from your own home. Most of what we know, or what we think we know about what it's like comes from the news. The goal of "Refugee Crisis" was to explore this and challenge it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1531192500463-G1DW2N4KS8B05HCGRMZY/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - Asian American Gothic Audio: Morgan Sung Visuals: Xia Rondeau Asian American Gothic was a collaborative piece I did with another Asian American female artist, Morgan Sung while attending Emerson College. The video you see here features an excerpt from the audio track by Morgan over the visuals I created. Using grotesque and overwhelming imagery our goal was to create a feeling of anxiety and confusion to reflect the experience of Asian Americans. We wanted it to be a statement about Orientalism and Yellow Peril. Taking images from various perspectives and points in Asian American history my goal was to represent the Asian American experience as broad, complicated, and ongoing. This video was projected onto a 18’x20’ mirrored wall to create a space in which imagery and sound would be overbearing. We projected the real house used in the painting “American Gothic” by Grant Wood (1930) to relate the Asian American experience to the American experience as a whole. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1531346109688-WU3YWRFEN2J70C1M32X6/IMG_9030.jpg film / installations https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1540922934889-2NFOIKBDHEG6UVKUQIJL/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - Goddess of Democracy Draft 1. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1540923085608-LCDIHRRMCJYJXPWK0I3Y/image-asset.jpeg film / installations - You Left Me Early: Projected Poem (2017) Intended for 15'x12' projection, mixed media, 2017 I use media art to explore representation and memory. This video is an excerpt from the projected poem portion of my ongoing You Left Me Early project. For this central piece in particular I wanted to use text rather than picture to emphasize the power of words to seriously change the course of history and individual lives. The poem is broken into 2 parts in this video: "Naming" and "You Left Me Early". In "Part I: Naming", I introduce my name, Xia, which in Chinese means "dawn." Not only does this word suggest the time of day I was left by my birth family, it can also be interpreted as the time in my life--early. In "Part II: You Left Me Early", I explore my relationship to the open letter written on September 25, 1980 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, on controlling the population growth in China--the letter that essentially lead to the introduction of the one-child policy. This video was first presented on a 15'x12' ft. screen, and is intended for large scale projections as it contributes to my goal of taking up space and ensuring my message to China is impossible to ignore. Transcription of the poem: PART I: NAMING 霞 (XIÁ): RED CLOUDS 霞 (XIÁ): DAWN YOU LEFT ME EARLY (XIÁ): DAWN 霞 PART II: YOU LEFT ME EARLY YOU LEFT ME EARLY BEFORE I COULD SPEAK YOU LEFT ME EARLY BEFORE I COULD SPEAK BEFORE I COULD SPEAK BEFORE I COULD SPEAK UNDERSTAND WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO DID YOU HAVE TO GO? ?????????????????????? YOU LEFT ME EARLY YOU LEFT ME EARLY BEFORE WE COULD SPEAK THE FOLLOWING IS AN OPEN OPEN LETTER FROM THE CENTAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNISR PARTY OF CHINA SEPTEMBER 25, 1980 x3 . . . ON CONTROLLING THE POPULATION GROWTH IN CHINA IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT [THE LETTER IN CHINESE/ENGLISH] SEPTEMBER 25, 1980 IN CHINA MARCH 2, 1994 IN CHINA IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT IT WASN’T OUR FAULT I WAS BORN PART III: PREDETERMINED WORTH don’t tell them you’re a girl but more importantly don’t tell them you’re afraid they want to believe that you are but even if you are don’t let them take that from you they already took so much PART IV: maude, i hope you found love all the images of adoption i have are colored early morning sky. the elevator doors opened and it looked like a horizon of babies. rays of light radiating warmly like they do at the crack of dawn. crawling towards us looking for any human contact they could get. if i was a puzzle they were my pieces. if they were a puzzle i was their piece. peace. peace: something that doesn’t come easily when the first memory you had of love was it leaving (but you will find it.) (and it will find you.) part v: to whom it may concern, we weren’t missing. we were here. but not there. (we were anywhere but there.) but we were here. we weren’t missing. where were you? it wasn’t your fault we weren’t missing. where are you? it wasn’t your fault we weren’t missing. we are here [end] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1562546933024-Q26Q919F1GTEFB3EYNAS/dawn26.jpg film / installations - DAWN DAWN is a short film about a mother putting her child up for adoption. It's the second 3D animation I've produced and is the culmination of Jason Wiser's Advanced 3D Art and Animation course taught at the Harvard Extension School I took this Spring. It's a hypothetical and poetic piece about being a Chinese adopted girl and the history of the one child policy in China. These topics are ongoing themes and explorations in all of my art. Using the same character I created last year, the Goddess of Democracy as a real person, it's a statement about my complex relationship to China and its history of oppressive politics. Last year at this time I was finishing up my first class with Jason, Intro to 3D Art and Animation. For that class I produced my first 3D animation project titled Goddess of Democracy. In this 17 second long piece, we see the same character I use in this film walking to the heavenly gates of Tiananmen Square, under the portrait of Mao Zedong. We watch as the enigma of the Goddess of Democracy, my character, walk to the top of the bridge that leads to the entrance of the palace, turn to face the camera, and obstruct the portrait of Mao with her torch of liberty. It was ironic and representative of myself as a critic of Mao and communist China. We're from the same exact province and city, Changsha, Hunan Province. Although we will never meet, our stories are inherently connected in so many ways. Both this project and the first are representational of my relationship to contemporary Chinese history and politics. My characyer's outfit is very important as she is dressed in the same clothing worn by Tank Man, who wore a white button up with the sleeves rolled, black slacks, and a pair of dark shoes when he stood in front of the tanks that were sent in by the Chinese Government during the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 5th, 1989. For me, her outfit represents stoicism and bravery in the face of oppression. It also is a nod to a historical event China tries to pretend never happened, thus erasing the stories of all those killed and sacrificed during the Massacre and beyond. The Goddess of Democracy, dressed as Tank Man, carrying the torch of liberty and now a baby in this new film, all speak to the complexity of Mao's China, the one child policy in a historically patriarchal society that was driven by communism, and the story of the thousands of baby girls put up for adoption during its reign. DAWN is a celebration of the bravery and love of the mothers and families who had no other option but to give up their children, those who society has come to call "China's Lost Girls". This piece is historical fiction although I used a real photograph taken by a close family friend of the police station where I was found as a baby in China. In the most sincere and ironic ways I've always sought to intercept history and carve out a place for marginalized people. I don't feel marginalized myself because I'm fortunately from a very accepting and liberal home, but I feel like I have something to say about what it feels to be erased by power. In making art about this subject I remind the world, but especially China, we are not lost. "We" being all those whose stories have been overlooked. My work is an ode to our collective resilience, our collective voice, and our collective power. https://xiasrondeau.art/new-index daily 0.75 2018-07-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943254139-LG0O04K5Q5TNM827UFUG/B_SNTV1.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943262477-Y3TXFDZHJPTDZ4VAPMXY/c_SNTV2.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943273321-7QFOCPJ4NK301CF801M7/F_SNTV5.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943271800-ISJI6JLIDJJBJJYVYGFH/E_SNTV4.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943617611-10T1KTKTMB5FXQZDLCW3/G_SNTV6.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943253449-P8N1E3BRPNERXGAYXPZW/A_concept_1.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517943521045-F2Y2U9MYD261YR5IKX84/8.27x40+Poster+design+with+names%2C+before+Poncho+has+edited+jacket.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1517942088777-I9YB05I1IVFFI6FIEBQO/Si+No+Te+Vas 2d works - Si No Te Vas (2017) Si No Te Vas (2017) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1520902976060-1LK61CKQFH2RE8MBKEWP/THIS_IS_NOT_NORMAL_PICTURE.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1520996757685-GTM95PGW08OD8D7Y3HLS/Never_Again_24_Mini.PNG 2d works "#NeverAgain" (2018) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518042519447-JKC9QL7FMJTYFGMBEZ52/rsz_sntv_compress.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518042602428-HYS8UC0C5SURIZWZTNT5/Mimi+2017+signature.jpg 2d works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1531345835675-VP29TZRGSFEFYTKGCQX1/IMG_4102.jpg 2d works https://xiasrondeau.art/about-1 daily 0.75 2019-07-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1498278746976-WSGSQPZGD17OU4E0AXAW/profile about https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1518120303789-7CHJPS7BD4OHX8R7F29Q/18922480_1684653865175167_4238529768363322251_o.jpg about https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594dd2e3197aea120da8b9a7/1562547184593-LYMWFBBBKQIV731IYZFF/Resume+2019 about https://xiasrondeau.art/xiarondeau daily 1.0 2019-07-10