Diu Diu:
How time flies!
Yes, I always remember the lovely nickname that my high school classmates gave you, was it because you were always forgetful, or your dummy character, I also can’t be sure.
But I 'm sure that the time I think of you is much more than which you think of me. I am the person you become after fourteen years!
Perhaps at the moment you are carrying a painting box and a sketchpad weaving through the roads in Sichuan Fine Art Institute, or sitting behind the desk wearing myopia glasses, studying hard, preparing for the upcoming college entrance exam, or perhaps you are pushing the bike as the reward from daddy for your admission to high school, walking the way home after night classes.
I know you love hearing good news, let me tell you a great news, in April this year, our latest exhibition will be held in Shanghai, yes, a solo exhibition, your own exhibition. 14 years later, you have made two or three solo shows successively, in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan, there are all your figure appearing. Are you gonna happy for me?
I am very glad that you have chosen the way of art which you always love at the age of eighteen, under Daddy 's influence you fell in love with painting since you were small, you studied painting in junior and senior high school uninterruptedly, you were admitted to Sichuan Fine Arts Institute that you longed for, until smooth admission to postgraduate, like all these happened without a hitch.
About loneliness
Now after 14 years, you seem like a stone full of edges and corners, becoming more and more mellower under the grinding of river. But as a Leo, from eighteen years old confidence, stubborn and strong mind, to present convergence, low self-esteem and loneliness. Yes, I don 't like the present me, every time I think of you, I want to go back to become you again.
I have been thinking about the issue of loneliness, and Kerr, the pioneer of existentialism, said, "Any man is a solitary individual, he was born unique, irreplaceable. In the life of every person, they are experiencing various kinds of pain and suffering, which make people aware of their uncertainty and limits and fragility, and from "death " people taste the ultimate tragedy. " Although I think this sentence is a bit extreme, in nowadays when Internet pulls us more and more closer, our hearts are getting farther and farther. So I often hear people say, "I 'm lost in the jungle of steel and concrete, can’t find myself ".
Diu Diu, human kind is really a strange creature, each one of us is in the relationship with others, but why we still feel lonely? This may rise as a philosophical problem, people is meant to be strange to each other, perhaps we try hard to shape ourselves, try to fulfill our expectations just to meet other people’s expectations. We also have been in the pursuit of the meaning of the survival as the spiritual existence, which is the "sense of presence ", when loneliness arrives, we will make some behavior and performance, ideas and emotions to eliminate it. And now, I want to thank you for choosing art as your way, so that I can have an export to relieve loneliness, and look for the sense of existence. Life is born to be lonely, ain’t what we do all coping with loneliness?
And I paint it out. So there is the series of works named Patient with Autism, in the lonely, strange darkness, the little boy reaches out his arms, and his front arms is full of colorful flowers. Another little boy in the darkness, whose body is covered with colorful beetles, he is devoured by the loneliness but quietly looking into the afar. This reminds me of the famous sentence in Eileen Chang 's "Genius Dream ", "Life is a gorgeous gown, covered with crawling fleas. " I want to modify it into "Life is a naked body, covered with crawling worms. " Hahaha.
About love
Do you still remember the Nicky Wu calendar? How about the time followed the boy you like to his home after school instead of going home? And the time you were bullied and slapped by classmate, who called you sissy, but you didn’t tell mom and Dad when you went home? And when the students were reading Jin Yong, Gu long, instead you only show special preference for San Mao, Eileen Chang？
At the age of eighteen, you already feel you are different. Please do not feel self-abased, do not feel confused, you are just as normal as everyone, only that you like boys. Most of it is natural and unexplained medically. In some countries with high social tolerance same sex can get married, but present China needs more understanding and attention to this, instead of just prejudice.
Love, it is the bridge linking up people 's hearts and minds, it’s the feelings from the heart, it is regardless of age, sex, race, nationality. It reminds me of the a line in "Boys don 't cry ", I send it to you：
"I fear anterior road,
but at the thought of you,
have ability to go straight up. "
Tell you secretly, you met a good boy in college, you fell in love, he majored in designing, you were together for four years, you separated because he went to Beijing, and stayed in Chongqing. You created a lot of works for him, "Since You Been Gone, My Heart is Empty ", "Love " "Lost Love ". Knowing nothing about love, you had tasted sweet and bitterness brought by love when you were with him.
Now you also meet the boy you like, you have been together for six years. Will he be the one who keep you accompanied for the rest of your life? Just like Cheng Dieyi’s line about "lifetime " in Farewell My Concubine, "Certainly, a lifetime is a lifetime, one year, one month, one day or one hour less will not do. "
Back to this exhibition, "To the Corner of the World " is dedicated to him.
About family
A few years ago, I told my parents that I liked boys. We called it "out of closet " – coming out from the shuttered closet. Mom cried and cried for this thing, dad also threatened to end father-son relationship over and over again. Although many years has past, after this, I always feel there is a layer of gauze between me and them, suddenly, I lost the ability to communicate and love. You know mom and dad are the traditional type of people, spending their whole lifetime living in a small town. Their understanding and acceptance requires quite some time. Maybe we are the kind of person who is good at expressing the feelings, I also don 't wish that my "coming out " puts my parents into the closet.
Recently my mood is very complicated, I created the "The Flowers and the youth " and "The snake and the youth ".
Big uncle and grandma died in succession in the past few years, it’s the first time I taste death so closely. A living person just disappeared in front of your eyes, turning into dust, living inside the heart.
You bastard, don 't be naughty anymore, if you have time, go to see big uncle and grandmother while they are still alive. When you were little, you were raised up by grandma, parents were busy working, you and grandma were inseparable. Afterwards she suffered from Alzheimer, and even forgot about me, only smiled, and touched my face.
Then, I painted a painting for the deceased "I Can Not Lose You ".
Here it is, writing to here it reminds me a lot about the past, my eyes is blurred by tears.
Yourself, 14 years later
March 2017
