Ma, Xingrui

Through a visual art practice and research, this thesis explores my personal background as a Chinese immigrant, through depicting scattered childhood memory to seek overlooked connections among people, objects, and places. By investigation of theories of human geography, social psychology, philosophy, especially Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place and Maurice Halbwachs’s On Collective Memory, I considered how people's sense of belonging to homeland is strengthened through memories of ordinary objects and everyday interactions. In relationship to my practice, I define memory as a semi-fabricated hallucination. I further invoke time in my projects in reference to Svetlana Boym’s concept of contemporary nostalgia. The paper analyzes my projects, The Tuesday Afternoon, Snow, and River, which I produced during my study in the MFA program of Emily Carr University. I employ watercolor painting and animation installation as my medium, inspired by artists Luc Tuymans, Christian Boltanski and William Kentridge, to explore the following questions: how do fragmented still images and dynamic animations in dark spaces transmit the feelings of loss and disorder caused during immigration, and the ambivalence of memory? Could these practices create a space of intersection for personal and collective memory? How does the use of obsolete technology contrast with the contemporary concept of time in rapidly developing society?