Getting Personal with Peggy Huang; and a conversation on “Proper Asian Wife in Training – Volume 1”
In conversation with Peggy Huang
1.Could you tell us a little about “Proper Asian wife in training - volume I”, which is part of the “Proper Asian wife in training (完美人妻養成計劃 ).” project?
Proper Asian wife in training is an experimental video piece I created in the summer of June 2020, it’s an exploration of my personal identity as a contemporary Taiwanese woman I pondered over questions like who am I? Who do I want to become? After living in London for 3 years, it really helped me push myself towards deciding who I wanted to be – to think and challenge myself in part of a self-healing process. I then came up with "Proper Asian wife in training”, it’s a coming-out piece as a 'rebel'. It was a challenge. I wanted to push my boundaries to see what I could produce that comes from a place of my duality. I wanted to embrace my cultural self and upbringing (Taiwanese traditional rules) also finding the balance between these rules and the more contemporary self (perhaps the more western influenced one).
2. In your experimental piece, you naturally drift into different conversational topics such as “self-love or nursing your body”, “your fathers dream” and “marrying a good guy” all of these are discussed whilst tattooing yourself, what is this meant to portray?
There’s this ancient Chinese saying that is still rooted in my culture: “身體髮膚受之父母,不敢毀傷,孝之始也” It translates to “your skin is given to you by your parents, so you should do everything you can to protect it, and not injure or wound it.” This is the starting point of being a good son/daughter, now if we apply this on the idea of tattooing... stabbing one’s skin with ink leaving ‘scars’, it’s a mega rebellious action to commit. However, acupuncture, also something super traditional, heals patients by inserting needles into skin. Tattoo and acupuncture both practice penetrating the skin with thin, solid, metallic needles but are being tagged with a complete opposite attitude. If linking the two together, tattooing can be a therapeutic practice too?
With tattoos, it’s never about which flash I ended up choosing, but more of trying to record that period of lifetime. It’s like listening to songs, certain songs that bring you back to specific times in the past. I felt that with tattoos. It’s quite awkward, to talk about my honest feelings to my parents, so then having new tattoos is really a ‘right in the face’ way to push new boundaries between me and my parents, a way to redefine who I am to them, and to ‘come-out’ in loud silence. Lowkey therapeutic… also, I just really enjoy having tattoos.
3. A re-occurring theme explored in the piece was familial expectations, is this something you feel is a struggle for you?
The idea of family values is strong in East Asian culture. I think the struggle for me is trying to find the right balance in meeting both my own expectations for myself and my parents’ expectations for me too. One expectation I give myself is to be a ‘good daughter’ in return to all the unconditional love my parents have given and still are giving to me… and so there’s this impending pressure I feel, almost like an obligation that family comes first but this is in battle with the question “who am I?’ I suppose there’s a lot here I’m trying to learn and unlearn.
4. Your relationship with contemporary art, is it also intertwined with exploring your identity?
I’ve found that the contemporary art/fine art mindset is a means of allowing myself to explore my identity in a calm way. It’s not too hardcore but like slow cooking a dish, with time it cooks out the best aspects (like of oneself). With contemporary art there’s always this big direction I’m moving towards but I’m not sure where the destination is. So, then there’s space allowing the unconscious and unknown coming in, I suppose that’s also called opportunity. When new work is completed, it's as if I just woken up from a dream (this can be either good or bad). Looking into your dream and subconscious is the key to understanding your true self or what you’re battling deep inside, with that I get to consciously heal myself by understanding what I’m suppressing.
Suppression comes in the package of my upbringing essentially. We were taught to not parade big emotions or least not to burst out in emotion, as it doesn’t reflect ‘maturity’ - I’m trying to unlearn this. I feel like being able to express emotion and be honest with oneself requires strength and that also can be another definition of maturity.
5. How do you feel transitioning from an illustrative mindset to a conceptual art one?
Bit difficult but also quite liberating actually. A conceptual art mind set is a process of unlearning my habits of running away from my honest thoughts and learning to unbox and make peace with it. It’s a never-ending self-therapy session
Illustration/design allows me to be creative without having to dig into my soul. It reflected on who I was and my upbringing. Would say I grew up in a culture where we’re conditioned to suppress our authentic thoughts. Japan colonized Taiwan for 50 years from 1895 to 1945, which was the time my grandparents were raised. Right after that it was the intense 38-year -long martial law period which was the era where my parents grew up. Both generations were not given any space to express their feelings in order to survive. The shared incapability to express is the coping mechanism alongside such a traumatic upbringing. It’s then not a surprise that I’m an expert at unconsciously ignoring my true feelings knowing I was raised by these people lol. I remembered that one time when I was still back in London, my best friend (she’s not Taiwanese) told me that she made her second Taiwanese friend and then she said “I realized that you Taiwanese are very agreeable” . I laughed; I seriously think that is on point. Anyways, what I am trying to say is, Illustration is a reflection of my culture, my people and conceptual art mindset is something I learned in London -- to be free, to touch my honest thoughts. It’s a good balance like yin and yang in tai chi.
6. Identity is a conundrum for many. Did you have any theoretical influences for your work?
For sure I would say the work of Edward Said and the ideology behind Orientalism, is so relevant. The battle between east vs west culturally, economically, and socially. Also, Re-Orientalism, I’d say it’s something that I focus on --- Knowing that the impact from colonialism and imperialism is irreversible so how are we redefining our identity as Far East Asian or Taiwanese, this is something that plays a big role on my work. I also think Confucianism, ancient Chinese philosophy which still lives in contemporary East Asian veins, definitely influences my work and is also something I want to challenge.
7. Defining and pin-pointing identity can be difficult in a postmodern era, it’s somewhat a hybrid of so many societal and cultural elements. Postmodernists see identity as “not fixed” but a continual process of negotiating with different parts of yourself. What are your views on this?
I quite agree with the term ‘not fixed. 90s kids grew up on the internet, so we already had easy access to other worlds and cultures and quite easily were bombarded with information – in a sense it made me feel like I don’t belong to any culture to some extent. The existence of the virtual world has a huge impact on how one identifies themselves in the 21st century. It’s not as simple as it used to be, such as identifying from where you were born and raised.
I wouldn’t consider myself bilingual, I started learning English at the age of 4. My parents spent money sending me to English cram school, hiring native English speakers as my personal tutor just to play and talk to me in English because they think English is the ultimate tool to make me more desirable and hireable in a globalised world. They didn’t realize that might in a way backfire, language is a tool, yes, but it’s also the key to another culture and that adds as a big part to my identity. In a sense it makes it more complicated.
At the end of the day, home or what you belong to is where your loved ones are. Perhaps we don’t belong anywhere, we’re all floating. In a postmodern world people belong everywhere.
8. What is next for the ‘Proper Asian wife in training’ series?
For the next part for Proper Asian wife in training, I think I’d like to go in depth with Taiwanese elements and explore. About our beliefs or you can say philosophy and food too. Try to dig into the topic of ‘What is Taiwanese? Who are we?’. While also continuing to push and reset the boundaries between tradition and contemporary.
The Taiwanese identity is still quite unsettled, it’s something that we are still developing because of our historical background. We are still in the process of defining who we are and that makes it very exciting.