Artist
Su Yang 杨苏
https://suyangvisual.com/@suyangvisual
Su Yang 杨苏 is a Chinese
artist who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Yang holds a Ph.D. in
Visual, Asian Cultural, Gender and Sexuality Studies from The University of
Melbourne in Australia, a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the State
University of New York at Buffalo in the US, and a Bachelor of Arts in Design
from Tsinghua University in China. Currently, Yang is a Faculty in Creative
Practice at The University of Melbourne.
Yang’s multidisciplinary practice conveys
her feminist investigation on female representation and her sense of social
responsibilities for contemporary social issues including anti-racism,
de/anti-colonialism, and social justice. Yang works across painting,
photography, video, and short film.
My current studio project ‘Invisible/Visible
Hands’ includes my performance recorded on video and a series of oil painting.
This project is to question the changing dominant standards of female
aesthetics that made, are making, and will continually make us (women) feel we
are not good enough and not beautiful enough. I hope to advocate a more
inclusive idea of beauty through my art. I borrow the metaphor “invisible
hands” of the unobservable market force that was used by Adam Smith in his book
“The Wealth of Nations” and make it a metaphor for the invisible ideologies
that encourage women to conform their appearances with the ideal beauty in
consumerism and marketing.
The invisible hands (ideologies) become the
visible hands (surgeon’s hands or anyone’s hands) that physically change
women’s appearances. The invisible socialized ideas of female beauty become
visible impulse upon to change women’s bodies. I was inspired by many facts and
news of women who underwent failed cosmetic surgery procedures in the many
facets, for example, the suffering body, the subsequent trauma, and the risks
of inflammation. No offense to the people who have done cosmetic surgeries. I’m
not judging them, and I understand they have their own choices. I focus on the
theme of female representation, female beauty, and cosmetic surgery because it
relates to each of us.








