We recently connected with Siyi Tang and have shared our conversation below.
Siyi, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
I believe that most artists derive their creativity from their own experiences, but I don’t want my creativity to be as fleeting as some of the things in my life that I can’t go back to. Therefore, I think it is important to look back. I often look back at my past works and records of my life, and maybe in one of these retrospections, I will find a new and continuous inspiration. About four or five years ago, I started photographing houses. I loved the flowers and plants in front of the door, the chairs at the porch, and the toys scattered in the yard. But I’ve always had a hard time putting it all together in a way that I was happy with. It wasn’t until I was in a retrospective that I suddenly realized that the urge to record these came from the insecurity I acquired as a child and the experience of constantly drifting in a foreign country as I grew up. So, I began to organize these thoughts and started my creative project about my experiences in a foreign country and being homesick, Far From Home.
I think the key step to maintaining creativity is to keep experiencing and looking back.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Hi, all, I am a photography-based artist and my work has been exhibited in several cities and countries. As an Asian woman, I hope to demonstrate my power as a new generation of Asian women through my menstruation artworks and break the audience’s stereotypes of women, especially Asian women. In addition to the works calling for the normalization of menstruation, I am also exploring my themes of loneliness, longing, and conflict as a Chinese woman in a foreign country, endless thoughts of family and home, and hope for life.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think the most important things are the desire to learn, the ability to acquire knowledge, and the ability to think critically once you’ve got the knowledge.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”, is a book that led me into the world of photography. However, this book is not only about photography, whenever something happens in the real world, I can always find the corresponding elaboration and criticism in it.
Contact Info:
- Website:www.siyitangphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t.siyi/?hl=en
