Wen | Shangqing
Edit | Masha Li
Typography | Respect for the teacher
Vanessa Xu
Post-90s illustrator, independent curator, founder of EROTICAAA, a young avant-garde artist alliance
Behind this series of titles, there is also a name that surprises the unknown masses - professional.
Fast forward to 2011, when Instagram and Pinterest were still unknown, and "circumvention software" was not yet popular, Renren was an excellent platform for understanding the outside world.
Artists and illustrators vanessa follows create their own photo albums and share the works of erotic illustrators from the extranet, such as Rockin Jelly Bean, Gene Bilbrew, Namio Harukawa, Tom of Finland, etc.
When she sees a photo album she likes, Vanessa will immediately backhand like it and share it in her timeline.
Due to the frequent sharing of illustrations of eroticism, color, and sexuality, many netizens labelEd Vanessa with negative labels such as "debauchery", "Bitch", and "frivolity". After all, in the stereotype, it is the privilege of boys to openly share the so-called "yellow map".
Vanessa did not relent because of this, simply calling herself a professional.
"Man is a social animal, accustomed to following the mainstream ideas, according to the approval of others, to judge whether what he is doing is correct. If you live in a socially accepted way, you will be recognized, and vice versa, you will be discussed and ostracized. ”
In Vanessa's eyes, "Bitch" is not a derogatory term used for "slut-shaming", but is used to identify the criteria for those maverick girls (or boys) who insist on being their own "weird" girls (or boys), hoping that more people will follow their hearts and not be bound by traditional stereotypes.
It's reminiscent of what Madonna said in a 1995 interview: "I'm hard-pressed, ambitious, and very clear about what I really want." If that's pitch, then I'm okay with that. ”
<h4>Step 1</h4>
For traditional Chinese families, going to a foreign country to study art is already a crazy temptation on the edge of danger, and art from the perspective of things is undoubtedly a huge impact on the three views of parents.
"In the beginning, they were very reluctant to let me do erotic and heterochromatic things, and they didn't want me to be too different from other children."
Vanessa has been very sensitive to color since she was a child, and once took advantage of an art class to make herself a set of "nail paintings" with 24-color watercolor pens.
"I didn't expect my dad to drag me into the bathroom and beat me up because I wasn't serious in class. When I was a child, I also liked to doodle on the wall and was beaten a lot. ”
Perhaps because she is often "corrected" by her father, Vanessa is eager to escape from the traditional stereotype and pursue what she is really interested in.
She was always thinking, "If Dad could think of buying me a little chalkboard for me to doodle with, would I be more creative now?" ”
The real "reconciliation" between Vanessa and Dad was at her graduation ceremony.
Generally, American universities will hold a large-scale graduation ceremony for the whole school, and the graduates will shake hands with the president one by one, hug and receive the certificate, the whole process takes at least 2 hours, and then in the second half, the emotional audience also began to chat with themselves.
In order to make the boring process fun, and in order to completely change the impression of her parents, Vanessa brewed a big trick: taking advantage of her parents' lack of attention, she quietly changed into a set of Sailor Moon cos costumes inside the graduation robe.
When Vanessa's name was read, she first went on stage and hugged the head of the department, then ripped off the bachelor's uniform, revealing the shiny Sailor Moon costume inside, and waved the bachelor's obedience on the stage.
The originally dull venue suddenly exploded, everyone was cheering and clapping and whistling, and the mentor and the principal were clapping their hands and shouting happily.
This bold attempt really worked, and the traditional father realized that there might be differences in Chinese and American cultures, and the original daughter's bold and exaggerated style was widely praised, so he silently stopped interfering.
In addition to wrestling with her parents, Vanessa's creative path at school has not been smooth.
A Chinese take the European and American style illustration route, will it be unsatisfactory?
When Chairman commented on Vanessa's work, his first impression was that she was too mainstream, hoping that she would be more immersed in The Chinese or Asian cultural context in her work.
In Chairman's eyes, a Chinese girl who is stubborn and contrary to the creative trend is like a spoiled child.
From the perspective of career planning, what the professor said is not unreasonable. In the European and American markets, ancient and exotic winds will indeed be more popular because of their uniqueness. But vanessa is more concerned with the content she creates than the market.
"I don't like to label my Asian background unless the work requires it."
Inspired by the role of Anna Tsuchiya in the Japanese film "Evil Girl Hanaku", Vanessa created the Japanese style work SAKURAN.
For a while, Vanessa suddenly became interested in the legend of the monster and painted an ascetic theme of a scorpion woman seducing a monk.
For Vanessa, the DNA of Asian culture is not a gimmick of creation, but is contained in detail.
<h4>"Miss Shanghai" in New York</h4>
A native of Shanghai, Vanessa transferred to the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York as an undergraduate to study illustration.
"I was very comfortable when I first arrived in New York, because it was so similar to Shanghai, it was the same international metropolis, and I could even eat ramen outside at two or three o'clock."
But the longer you live, the more you can intuitively feel the difference between the two cities.
Vanessa compares them to two girls with full personalities:
"Miss Shanghai" is like a well-educated girl, both beautiful and smart, from an early age to talk business with the elders of the family.
She has a very keen sense of business and fashion, and her career is naturally good and fast. When she is not working, she likes to go to luxury hotels, Internet celebrity cafes, popular exhibitions with her sisters to take photos and punch cards, and send circles of friends.
There are many rebellious girls in her family circle who engage in subculture and low-brow art, and the elders of the family are naturally very unaccustomed to it, and always try to block these small groups.
But "Miss Shanghai" herself is still very tolerant and open.
"Miss New York" came from the aristocratic elite class, and the entire family graduated from the Ivy League.
She was rebellious as a child, a typical party animal, and would hide small snacks made of marijuana at parties to entertain friends.
Growing up, she worked hard, but also did not forget to actively socialize, mingle in various parties and cocktail parties, and seize any opportunity to meet people.
In her free time, Miss New York visits The Met Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is keen on running, yoga and walking the dog, loves coffee and hates the subway.
In terms of choosing friends, she does not look at skin color, race, family background, as long as you have talent, she will recognize you from the heart and is willing to provide various opportunities.
Strip clubs, comic book toy stores, heterochromatic bookstores, painting materials stores, flea markets, and Chelsea's art galleries are scattered throughout the streets, ranging from mainstream to niche.
Thanks to New York's unique cultural atmosphere, Vanessa has been shooting various creative videos since 2012, and by the way, "out of the circle".
<h4>A group of people's "Art Judica"</h4>
Because she personally felt the misunderstanding and discrimination against erotic art works, Vanessa gathered a group of "art geeks" around her and founded EROTICAAA - The Erotica Arts Alliance Erotic Arts Alliance.
Erotic means "erotic" in English, and erotica means "erotic artwork", pronounced: Erotic.
EROTICAAA reads to do: Artrotika ah, AAA (aaah) is a bit of a sense of edimate, alluding to eroticism, and lust is related.
Secondly, AAA (aaaah) is also the cry of erotic artists, full of emotion, rigid and soft.
In fact, the background of the establishment of EROTICAAA is also based on this story:
The major course of the third year requires each person to pick a masterpiece and draw a series of illustrations.
Vanessa chose Gone With the Wind.
The story takes place between 1861 and 1865, when the tide of battle changed dramatically and all the men went to war.
The scene is under the rain of bullets, Melanie is about to give birth, the heroine Scarlett controls her inner fear and the danger of losing her life at any time, and personally delivers melanie.
From the perspective of the baby about to be born, through the mother's vagina, the picture sees the anxious and sweaty heroine Melanie reaching out her hand to deliver the baby, which suddenly pulls the audience into the anxious situation at that time from the first perspective.
The dark olive-shaped shadow around it symbolizes a vague image of the vulva, representing the path that babies must take to be born.
However, the academy Chainrman was not impressed by the idea and simply dropped the word "gross" as a comment.
Such negative feedback really gave Vanessa a lot of shock.
"I've been wondering why he's so disgusted with my portrayal of female vaginas. Even though I didn't depict the organ in great detail, I just used shadows to set off the atmosphere. ”
Vanessa also realized that aesthetics could not be demanded and did not have to blindly pander to authoritative opinions.
Vanessa's artistic inspiration is very broad, partly from "jealousy".
Once she sees a great work on the Internet, she will silently shout in her heart: "Oh my God, this is also too good to draw!" "This inspires a strong desire to create and challenges yourself to make better works."
How many possibilities are sexy?
In the face of such an erotic artist who deals with "sexy" all day long, I ask Vanessa a question: Who is the sexiest woman in your eyes?
"Stripper Dita Von Teese!"
The earliest striptease shows were for the service and entertainment of men, and due to inner shyness and moral shackles, there were very few women in the audience. But as the times progressed, the meaning of modern striptease also changed.
Elegance and worldliness, sensuality and asceticism, together produce a wonderful chemistry in modern striptease performances. Dita's beautiful dress, graceful posture and seductive movements are not so much to please anyone, but to show everyone the sensual cheerfulness and beauty, so that people can see the ultimate appearance of sex.
Dita Von Teese also said in an interview that she has many more female fans than male fans, and after each performance, the girls will hold small gifts and line up to ask her for autographs.
In China, "sexy" is not a commonly used positive word, and even has the meaning of obscenity and harassment, which is even more rare to describe women of excellent quality.
"I used to have a one-sided understanding of sexiness, thinking that only like Dita, or like Kylie Jenner, the kind of West Coast girls who are bumpy and traditionally sexy." 」
The American drama "Battle of the Bones" completely subverted Vanessa's idea.
"Battle of the Bones" is about Diane Lockhart, a senior partner at a well-known chicago law firm, who announces her retirement at the peak of her life, and suddenly becomes involved in a fraud storm with her friends, resulting in the wealthy being cheated out of her pension overnight, and she has to re-emerge from the mountain to navigate the difficult former law firm directors and tricky cases.
"Diane's sensuality is expressed from her every action, words and deeds, as if no matter what problems she encounters, she can respond to you with a calm and self-assured, very powerful aura, and her whole body emits a sexy glow."
It turns out that the Office Lady, who is more than half a hundred years old and determined to kill, can also be so sexy.
"Sexy is not defined by age" is not just a politically correct beautiful sentence, it can break people's imagination of "sexy".
When we talk about independence, what are we talking about?
Around 2012, Girl Power was a very niche topic. Today, largest state media and small marketing kols are advocating independent women, exquisite women, and "not dependent on men, to achieve economic freedom" arguments.
As a women's liberation movement, Girl Power's original intention was to evoke women's sense of independence, awareness and acceptance of themselves.
Vanessa said: "A good social environment is not only to allow women to fight in the workplace, but also to let housewives who focus on the children of the family feel at ease and feel the same respect and value." ”
The so-called equal rights of men and women means that everyone can have the right to choose.
Some people, even if they have achieved financial independence, are still caught up in anxiety, insecure, must rely on others, hope to gain a sense of security through marriage, and prefer to tie themselves into unhealthy relationships rather than be independent.
For example, Xiao S, who has reached financial freedom early, but his spirit and emotions have always been not independent enough, and he never dares to take the last step when facing the "scumbag", and fans hate iron and steel.
In Gone with the Wind, in the face of Red's departure, Scarlett says, "Tomorrow is another day." (Tomorrow is a new day)
"Spiritual and emotional independence is just as important as economic independence, but it has been overlooked."
<h4>From niche to niche</h4>
Erotic art has no future in China.
Hu Xiaojiang, who is an anomalous comic, once analyzed that Japan, as a country with particularly developed comics, according to ordinary cognition, only mainstream comics are developed enough to have room for heterochromatic comics. But then it turned out that this was not the case, in fact, in the beginning, when the creators became enthusiastic about comics, it was natural to have two directions.
If you hope that externally, it will become a mainstream commercial comic and enter the commercial market; if you hope that internally, it is something that pleases you and pursues a unique personality, then it will become more of a heterochromatic comic, and the creative choices are already different in the beginning.
After returning to China, due to the limitations of creative conditions, Vanessa took a different path and embarked on another grotesque and alternative niche route.
"Life Goes On, Curiosity Goes On": From October 26, 2019 to June 28, 2019, Vanessa and independent curator Daishi co-curated a subcultural baby exhibition called "Curiosity Cabinet III: Magic Doll Special Exhibition" in Shanghai, recruiting nearly 100 artists. It can be called the most hardcore and unique trend play collection exhibition in China.
Sticking to a path that few people have traveled, how about "Bitchy"?
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