Minqi Xu
Front - 'The Green Light'
Back - 'The Green Light'
Here are the sketches for installing this piece. The video will be projected on the screens from two sides by projectors. The screens are fixed on a wood box, which is composed of two frames as the sketch. The reason why I seperated the box into two is for the convenience of transportation and hidding the laptop inside. The ideal plan is to hang the screens from the celling, considering the difficultity of insatalling it in Copeland Gallery, where with a high celling, I changed the plan to making a frame to present. In order to meet the comfortable level for watching, the centre of the screen is 160cm from the floor (160cm is suitable for the audience with different height.) I choose MDF board as the material to make the box because it's cheaper and lighter than wood.
The budget of this project is around £100 , including the price for purchasing screens and MDF boards. The wood box will be made by myself in the wood workshop, so there will be no budget for labour.
( the price for screen refers to : https://shop.flints.co.uk/Products/pg_project921926 )
(the price for wood refers to: https://www.championtimber.com/2440-x-610-x-6-7mm-nom-pro-medium-density-fibreboard-20738181 )
Research- 'The Green Light'
These five paintings were created base on the idea of facing another side of myself. In my dream, I witnessed another me from a parallel world. There is a hypothesis about the connection between dream and parallel worlds. The door will open during the dream, so what we see in the dream maybe is our life in another world. This series is a story about I saw my hidden desires and desperation in my dream, and I tried to save myself from it. It leads me to the 'Green Light' story, utilizing the parallel worlds for self- redemption. These paintings won't be shown in the MFA Show but I used them as props in 'The Green Light'. They appear after the protagonist receives an envelope from an anonym. These paintings provide a hint for what has happened in the past and suggest the existence of the parallel world.
'ALEX'
2020.2
A Performance by Minqi Xu, Shenna Yang, Claire Michel, and Zebra Zhang
Shenna Yang, Claire Michel, Zebra Zhang, and I performed 'Alex' in February. We sat in a line and acted in one character. We invented one character with multiple personalities called Alex, whose experience could reflect the main themes in our art practice - memory, trauma, family, dream, fiction, etc. This character switches from a different age, gender, personality, and background from time to time. They are all dressed in blue denim jeans and a red top. Alex’s four personalities wake up one by one and tell his or her story to the audience.
The first Alex (played by Minqi Xu) is a rich widow who started to find out some dirty secrets in her dream after the death of her husband. The second one is a young man (played by Shenna Yang) who was suffered the maltreat from his parents and was sent to jail because of stealing food for his sisters and brothers. The third Alex ( played by Claire Michel) is a woman who narrates the desperate car crash that killed both her son and her husband on her anniversary day. The fourth character ( played by Zebra Zhang) is a creepy man who tells his bus journey on the way to the Royal Academy.
We decided to perform again on the degree show and invite more people to join and create more characters, but under the situation now, the plan was changed to do it as a live streaming performance on 'Zoom' or Instagram.