Pussy - Ming Lu

About

In Pussy, Lu employs a wide array of techniques, using installation, 3D printed sculpture, ceramics, video-performance, and painting, as part of a conceptual approach that addresses the trappings of female gender identity and fertility.

Ming Lu states in a recent interview with Aesthetica Magazine, “I place myself in my work as a character, and move through the conversations I set up between Eastern and Western aesthetics. Earlier series and my recent work are all connected to my experience and identity. My identity as a woman, and a Chinese artist in the UK.”

A metaphorical and deadpan use of everyday objects to speak of important issues is a typical technique of the artist, her work often veering between abstraction and literalness; between the familiar and the uncanny; between absurdity and gravity. Pussy invites the visitor to explore a domestic environment, in which household items such as cosmetics (lipstick and facial masks), lingerie, hair extensions, furniture, and food are transformed into anthropomorphic playful representations of the female body and the female experience.

Ming Lu is interested in the breaking-up of forms, functions and concepts, and their transformation into something new. By placing pervasive pop-cultural symbols of femininity, fertility, domesticity, beauty and elegance in new poetic and surreal narratives and settings, she separates objects from their everyday context, as Lu puts it, “modifying objects as bodies, or vice versa,” conducting a conceptual and aesthetic play between object and objectification.