Textile Work
Dots, Traces and Surfaces, The Wandering of a Thread
In Elissa's Ph.D. research, she investigate the complex relationship between time, place, environment and the changeable, protean concept of belonging and identity through the lens of craft and textiles, generating the interplay between globalisation and identity embedded in craft and creating new narratives through knitting practice. This research starts with exploring the fluidity in knitting in the 'third space', later on, she creates a 'third space' in this research by bringing the physical knitting into digital realm and starts ro inspect the materiality of immaterial and its relationship between identity fludity and cultural hybridity. By manipulating a technique she is familiar with, and also an important component of her identity into a unfamiliar field, this action allowed her to re-ground in the new environment.
The Structure of Sadness On Cultural Erasure
Xiaotong (Elissa) uses her work to reflect on the impact of globalization and modernization on cultural diversity and traditional cultural patterns. Being born and raised in Inner Mongolia, having lived in Beijing and studied in London, she is using herself as an example of cultural erasure, telling her stories and experiences through materials. Considering the difference between dwelling spaces, she conveys her Mongolian heritage and western experiences by working closely with both natural and man-made architectural materials, exploring the contrast between hard and soft. In her textile work she mixes fibre and yarns from Mongolian and the UK. Xiaotong (Elissa) invites her audiences to think about their heritage and roots when they see her work.
Under the Mask
Xiaotong(Elissa) believe that self-identity is Variable. She found that self-identity in private space and public space is different, people use to wear ‘masks’ in the public space. In this project, she focus on the emotion aspect, I tries to explore what sorts of negative emotions that people usually hide in the public space, try to visualise them by explore the ‘structure of anger, fear and sadness’, and vent them by her knitted textiles. The artwork is welcome to be touched and stretched.
Harmony
This is Xiaotong(Elissa)'s first project at RCA. Her inspiration was come from her personal feeling. When she was a child, she was inflammable and always felt angry about everything around her. After she grew up, she tries to endure her bad emotion and try to build an easy-going and positive personality. she called this harmony. So harmony become the key word of her work. Austria artist hundertwasser believes harmony means human and nature for him. He used his architects and painting to show the their harmony with nature and individual creation. After that she extracted some elements from hundertwasser’s work to draw the pictures she taken. Then I extracted her colour board. When she applied this concept to her textiles, she creates harmony by applying contrast on 1 piece.
