Yuyang Guo,

Art Educator

Making Paper into Things, and Things into Paper

‘Rule 7:  The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something, It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things’

‘Helpful Hints: Save everything — it might come in handy later’

—   Corita Kent Immaculate heart college art department rules

If we consider the that the ‘function of art’ is ‘to break through the conventionalized and routine consciousness’ (Dewey, 1934), then the task of an art educator is to facilitate such a breakthrough. My research explores this challenge through my experience as an international student who has just arrived in a new country, and whose studies have been restricted, interrupted and affected by a pandemic, and a new culture and identity. In this practice, I have used ingredients from my daily consumption: citrus fruits, vegetables, chicken, spices, and waste from coffee-making. Using my kitchen as a studio I made them into pulp and transformed them into sheets and shapes by employing the method of paper-making that I learned in my early childhood in China. I selected transcultural materials that I am familiar with to explore the interplay between making paper from things and things from paper.  playfully re arranging their wrappers, associations and material properties. to rethink matters that constitute me daily through ingestion I sought to pluralise identity from make-to-consume, to make-to-exist.