Willful Child/Tame Beast
Catherine Wang
| CalArts School of Art | Art | MFA1 |
DESCRIPTION :
This sculpture is based on Los Angeles’s relationship to its rivers and natural environment. The basic structure is fence-like, evoking the duality of rivers as both boundaries and paths and the imposition of human-made divisions on the natural world. This structure also allows the path of the sculpture to change depending on how it’s installed. The “fence posts” made of tall branches are held steady by faux-concrete planters, recalling the way Los Angeles has fixed its unruly river into place with concrete channels. Strung between these posts is a ribbon of mesh encrusted with paint, cement, and detritus, a representation of how trash carried by rivers can seem almost decorative, festive. The title of the piece draws on Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “willful child” who is forcefully corrected and on traditional Chinese associations of water/rivers with dragons.
