I was very naughty when I was a little girl, and there are several scars in my body. Previously, I was very upset and even shamed about my scars. They are ugly. But now I am totally cool with them. The scars are my own unique marks and stories behind each of them are pieces of data about my life journey.
There are projects like Scar Project that aims to raise awareness of early-onset breast cancer and Behind The Scars that helps people “embrace their beauty no matter what their history”. They both document scars by photography. And I want to visualize my scars in a different form to record my scar stories.
In the first phase, I started to visualize a scar on my left wrist by an experimental installation.
A scar is already a visual object itself, so I decided to think about materiality. Cotton came to my mind, a fluffy, soft, pure and natural material, which can be used to shape my scar. A wood sheet is my choice for the base which I think is also natural and compatible with cotton. To build the connection between the installation and a scar, I used a helium balloon floating above cotton scar with a note of scar story hiding in it.
It looked beautiful, I thought, when it was finished. The white balloon was floating lonely and silently. Somehow, I felt a sense of sadness after looking at it for a while. The reason could be the color or shape. I didn’t really know.
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