Interview | Tingting Lou
Tingting Lou is a contemporary Chinese artist who was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang in 1995 and has received art education since childhood. In 2014, she entered Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, one of the eight major art academies in China, for the study of basic traditional sculpture characterization. In 2016, as an exchange student, she further studied Western art and cultural history, Western philosophy, and contemporary art and design at the Academia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Polimoda Fashion School and Università degli Studi di Firenze. At the same time, she began to contact with various materials, and carry out interdisciplinary art research and practice. In 2020, she came to London, and took a master’s program in sculpture at the Royal College of Art, where she was engaged in artistic creation. She currently lives in London and her installation works have been exhibited in the art group exhibitions in Shanghai, China, Florence, Italy, and London, the UK.
#Instagram:tingtinglouart #Website: www.tingtinglousartisticspace.com
At present, Lou's works include painting, sculpture, installation, and performance art. She is active in challenging traditional sculpture with her works, and her research starts with situational embedding, permeability, and drama, which can stimulate people's imagination and enhance interactivity. It also includes the studies and experiments on the theory of field, so as to develop a systematic and multidimensional sculpture work. In this system, she is adept at transforming the role of the audience from a viewer to a participant with dramatic artistic expressions, and her sculpture is presented in a narrative manner, in which the audience is also part of the exhibition.
10 Questions with Artist Tingting Lou
April 4, 2023
Q1. Let’s talk about yourself first! You were exposed to art from an early age. Who are you and what is your artistic background?
Influenced by my grandparents in childhood, I have been in contact with sketch and color since kindergarten, and started the journey of art enlightenment. I have formally received professional art education since junior middle school. I entered a professional art senior middle school and then Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, one of the eight major art academies in China, for systematic traditional art education. In addition, as an exchange student, I used to further study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Polimoda Fashion School, and Università degli Studi di Firenze, and began to contact with Western traditional art, design culture and contemporary art, initially trying to experiment with various materials and carry out interdisciplinary art research and practice. I am currently taking a master’s program at the Royal College of Art and living in London, the UK. The installation sculpture works created by me have participated in art group exhibitions in Shanghai, Florence, and London. In the world of art, just as Tristan Tzara said that, "The poem will be like you." I recognize myself by dealing with these artworks inspired by complex feelings and valuable life experiences, and prove the significance of existence and understand how to shape characters. They connect my spiritual world with reality. Art has become a part of my life and an opportunity for self-improvement. It is carried out through my wide imagination and unrestrained practice.
Q2. What first inspired you to pursue a career in sculpture, and how did you become interested in exploring the potential of new materials and technologies?
I want to keep exploring myself. In my current artistic career, my artistic creations mainly include painting, sculpture, installation art, and performance art, with no restrictions on the form of art. But sculpture and installation art account for the vast majority of my works. I am more enthusiastic about sculpture and installation art because they are more physical and tangible than two-dimensional art. In my artistic creation, I critically explore different ideological concepts and social themes in a tangible and immersive manner, emphasizing the interaction between art and space, time, and movement. Also, sculpture and installation art bring me the opportunity to break through traditional art forms, explore different materials and their characteristics, and feel the potential boundaries of various materials. For example, I will always be attracted by the various forms of chemical reactions generated by combining different materials, from traditional media like stone, metal, or clay to unconventional materials such as ready-made items, textiles, and even sound, and I like to combine them with artistic theories for innovation. The charm of sculpture and installation art is reflected by their emphasis on interaction with the environment, which have more creative possibilities in terms of shape, form, and spatial relationships. For example, in the project In Vain, I used modern skyscrapers as the natural background of it. I placed my work Three Little Pigs in a farm warehouse, and Instrument Ensemble is a project placed in a studio similar to a hospital operating room. They are works with specific sites echoing the surrounding space. What’s more, different emotional and behavioral reactions are produced by the audience’s interaction with the work and the surrounding environment, making the sculpture and artistic installation form re-creation, which increases the possibility of multi-dimensional artistic installations.
As for my interest in these potential new materials and technologies. As an artist who is passionate about sculpture and installation art, I am often driven by a desire to explore the possible boundaries and limits of my field, both technically and aesthetically. I try to achieve the artistic expression. I ultimately want through experimenting with new materials and technologies, researching innovative methods, exploring new forms of artistic integration, and creating fresh, unique, fantastic, and influential works. This experiment may be long and iterative, but it must have a lot of fun.
Q3. Your work often involves creating immersive experiences for viewers - can you tell us the importance of viewer participation and engagement in your art practice and philosophy?
In my artistic philosophy or practice, audience participation is an important part of sculpture and artistic installation works. Sculpture or installation art can be regarded as a form of experiential art with an emphasis on the experience of the work rather than just an object for viewing. Audience participation is an indispensable link of this experience because it makes the audience become active participants in meaning creation. Also, this three-dimensional art form can better break the barriers between the audience and the art world. By inviting the audience to get involved in the work, a more inclusive and accessible experience can be created to help the audience establish a deeper relationship with the work. Sometimes it has something to do with the collaboration between artists and audiences, which enables the audience to have a sense of common ownership and a deeper sense of artistic community in the artistic work, encouraging them to critically think of philosophical or social issues existing in this era.
Instrumental Ensemble, 2019
Wood, ultralight clay, acrylic pigment, glitter, canvas, stainless steel, hemp rope
Sculpture with adjustable size
Q4. What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?
Integrating different elements is full of challenges. I like to combine sculpture with sound, light, and images. This is an exciting and innovative artistic creation method that creates a unique multi-sensory experience for the audience. In this process, I need to transfer the skills of traditional sculpture to a hybrid, systematic, and multi-dimensional sculpture art installation combined with new media art, which will inevitably bring great challenges. In order to create a cohesive and effective work, I often need to coordinate various chemical or physical reactions between various elements, make a thorough planning and conduct communication between different interdisciplinary teams, and have a good command of knowledge and understanding of acoustics, lighting design, and projection mapping. This process drives me to continuously go deep into different arts, research and practice, and have proficiency in using various tools and software for creation. During the final presentation process, there will also be difficulties in presenting the space and environment of the hybrid system sculpture installation art. It is necessary to carefully consider how to control these variables, such as the size and shape of the space, ambient lighting, and any other factors that may affect the audience's experience, so as to achieve the effect I want.
Three Little Pigs, 2019
Wood, plastic, steel, clothes, stainless steel, carpet, stones
Sculpture with adjustable size
Q5. What messages do you want to convey with your work?
In my sculpture and installation artworks with mixed systems, I use a large number of emblematic metaphors, symbols, and multiple narrative forms. My inspiration comes from personal emotions, childhood experience, family life, and social background. By comparing the idealized fairy tale world with the complex, challenging, and limiting real world, I have explored multiple topics including family life, identity, motherhood, life, body, death, and subconsciousness, putting elements symbolizing the virtual world like the seemingly opposing sounds, videos and lights together with objects, physical sculptures, or scenes symbolizing the real world in the same space, so as to create a sense of contrast and comparison with conflict, tenseness, intensity, and controversy, and highlight good and evil, beauty and ugliness, light and darkness, order and chaos, realism and abstractionism, thus reveal the complexity and contradiction of human emotions in a way of struggle, absurdity, reflection, and humor. At the same time, Nietzsche's dichotomy between the Apollo and Dionysian principles provides a framework for the art creation process and the different modes of artistic expression in artistic theory, helping me to explore more topics and ideas about human emotions in a systematical and theoretical manner.
Q6. How has studying at the Royal College of Art in London influenced your artistic development, and what have been some of the most important lessons you've learned there?
When studying at RCA, what affects my artistic practice and development most is its emphasis on experimentation, exploration, and innovation. RCA provides a diverse and inclusive environment where people can interact with peers from different cultural, social, and disciplinary backgrounds, so that they can broaden their horizons, and develop skills in collaboration and communication. Through the collision of various worldviews and experiences, as well as exposure to different perspectives and methods, people can be inspired to create more meaningful and influential works. During my period of studying, I mastered the skills of carving, modeling, and painting, which enhanced the making, critically, and articulation of my expanded practices. The curriculum set also involved me with a variety of workshops which link with other design disciplines, such as Fashion Design, and other specialists of Fine Art. Several courses such as Introduction to Fine Art, provided an introduction to the fundamental principles of the Fine Art, including the examples of the interaction of the arts in selected cultures from history and around the world which enabled me to create beautiful and intellectual artwork through the combination of different disciplines. To support more experimental exploration, I refined skills in programming and photography, and leveraged knowledge of ceramics, wood-firing, and tenon technology, most of which I acquired from professionals. Drowning myself in the art creation enabled me to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses, and improved my creative and critical thinking abilities. Usually, I enjoyed the moment to challenge the conventional art forms, for instance, by using various materials, such as woods, to craft the sculptures. In addition, I am willing to share my thoughts with others and embrace the critics. Thus, my creativity, yearning for art practices in any form, and pursuit of pure art all developed my interest in Fine Art, a broad subject which allows me to work across the specialist area.
In Vain, 2019
Synthetic cloth, plastic, hemp rope, thread, linen
Sculpture with adjustable size
Q7. How do you navigate between and incorporate different skill sets and mediums in your theme? Particularly, How do you balance your interest in new technologies and materials with traditional sculpting techniques?
In the previous question, I actually explained this aspect in part. There are often opposing forces or principles in the themes of my works. For me, traditional sculpture is a realistic society, like Apollo, symbolizing principles and living in harmony with rationality, order, and symmetry. While new media art is a virtual, fantasy, or fairy tale and subconscious existence for me, like Dionysus, the god of wine, who symbolizes madness, affection, passion, chaos, and instinct. In my reflection on themes, I need the connection between body and emotion, the carnival of senses, and the transformation and liberation effect of Dionysus. With the development of society, different techniques and media are gradually involved, which I believe is an inevitable natural integration in today's era. The intervention of different technologies and media is like the metaphor of Dionysus that the primitive emotions and creativity of nature, as well as the infinite passion, energy, and spontaneity, make us transcend the limits of rational thinking, abandon inhibition, be willing to explore the unknown and praise the connection between the senses of the body and emotions, thus enabling people to enter a field with high sense of experience and emotion.
I once received traditional basic sculpture education, and it is undeniable that traditional sculpture indeed has an aesthetic feeling, but it has become too Apollo-based. I believe that the emergence of media from different disciplines such as new media and the rebirth of Dionysus are needed to restore vitality and creativity, so as to carry out new artistic transformation and innovation. In my artistic creation, sculpture requires not only technologies or skills, but also a deep connection between people and the deepest emotions and experiences within them. The power of Dionysus can help me explore my subconscious and reveal hidden fears, desires, and willingness, so as to create original, authentic, and transformative works through the contact with these primitive emotions.
In balancing the relationship between new technologies, new materials, and traditional sculpture, I believe that they all serve my artistic thinking and artistic themes. Therefore, we need to actively integrate the interaction between traditional and modern technologies, rather than treat traditional sculpture and new technologies and materials as independent entities, and face up to the interaction between them. Only by constantly exploring the relationship between the two to find a balance can we break through the traditional and existing boundaries and achieve innovation.
Q8. What new ideas or techniques are you excited to explore?
During studying art and conducting research in London, the UK, after attending a large number of art lectures, workshops, and interdisciplinary and cross-domain research, I have contacted with some emerging ideas and technologies in the art field, which are drawing widespread interest from artists and audience. These are also fields that I hope to try and work for in the future. Let me give you a few simple examples, some artists are now exploring the potential of virtual and augmented reality, hoping to create an immersive experience for the audience. It includes interactive installations, performances, and exhibitions that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, which is also one of the projects that I am most concerned about and keenly interested in. Bio-art is also a constantly developing field involving the use of living organisms, such as bacteria, cells, or plants, as artistic materials, which can create thought-provoking devices that challenge the understanding of life and boundaries. The innovation of artificial intelligence in art is also an newly rising and hot topic. Artists can generate music, visual art, and even literature with artificial intelligence algorithms. The research on sustainability is constantly enriched. More and more artists are exploring the potential of sustainable materials and processes in their works, including using recycled materials, reducing waste, and minimizing the carbon footprint in their projects. Finally, it comes to the collaborative art, which pulls together artists from different disciplines to create a greater work than the individual pieces combined. It may involve the collaboration between musicians, visual artists, dancers, and even scientists. These are just a few examples of the exciting new ideas and technologies emerging in art. As the technology and society keep developing, I hope to continuously break through myself and have more innovative and breakthrough works of art in the next few years.
Work in progress, image courtesy the artist
Q9. How do you hope your work contributes to the larger conversation around the role of artists in today’s society?ket?
The occupation of artists exists with a unique ability, charm, and mission, and art is indeed a powerful communication medium that can express complex thoughts, emotions, and experiences in ways that language cannot work. As an art practitioner, I am good at critically thinking about social issues through my personal identity and art creation, and reflecting them with art, thereby encouraging others to critically reflect on their beliefs and values. I am featured by a style of absurdity, humor, and criticism. Through this form, I hope to create works that can reflect the diversity, complexity, and contradiction of feelings in human society. I am intended to highlight issues in contrast, stimulate thinking, help people concern about important issues that may be overlooked, promote more profound understanding, empathy, and tolerance, develop compassion, and thereby trigger reflection and dialogue in the trend of thought in modern society, so as to make my own contribution to society.
Q10. Lastly, where do you see yourself and your art three years from now?
It’s necessary to challenge assumptions and break comfort zones. Artists, like other professionals, need to constantly grow and develop with the purpose to maintain professional relevance and achieve their goals. Regarding the state after three years, I believe that it must be a dynamic process full of constant reflection, evolution, and growth. Experiments on various materials will definitely increase the diversity of my artistic works in the future. Moreover, I will keep seeking ways to break through possible boundaries, develop new skills, and create new and interesting works of art. I think the plans for future art should be flexible, allowing art to develop and evolve over time. Personally, I hope to further study artistic theory and conduct academic research on the artistic path, and form my unique artistic perspective and style in the process of practice. More importantly, in the future, I will actively work with galleries and participate in various exhibitions, marketing, and promotion activities at home and abroad.
