Yixiao Fu,
Class of 2023

Art Teacher and Flâneur
(The loiterer and observer who doesn’t know what they are looking for）

Looking at the overlooked

“The loss of identity, the loss of the image of oneself, the loss of control, the loss of the preconceived images, but also drawing as the loss of all the non-expresse”.

(Anthi Kosma, 2022, p.9)

My concern and commitment to the overlooked have led me to become an art teacher in a rural Chinese secondary school. I would not call myself an 'artist' or an 'educator' as these titles are too heavy. I have become a Flâneur with a lost identity due to this practice. My work is about the passage of time and the lingering of my gaze as I move forward, the gradually changing watermarks in my bathroom, and the floor tiles on the walk to school.

I used to love looking up at the sky. My students taught me to look down at the ground and to focus and care for the marginalised and overlooked. I draw the overlooked in a serious and 'outdated' way. Through drawing, I resist the ephemeral, and the details of life reveal their own depth in the lingering.

Drawing as an action, a process of losing control, allows me to 'focus' and 'lose focus' simultaneously. It has nothing that can be confirmed and nothing that can be said. I believe the timeless contemporaneity of art and education is hidden in the spiritual seeking of uselessness. I want to keep this drawing going. There is no end here, only the present moment.

Kosma, A. (2022). Drawing Process as Loss and Lost Time. TRACEY, 16(1), 1-12