2008

There are two masked men. One man is masked in order to be identified as The Statue of Liberty; another is masked so that he is unidentifiable. Who are the masked men? Why do they wrap themselves in garments and a hooded sweatshirt? What are they trying to tell us? Where are they? Within this picture, the two masked men engender such an ambiguity that answering any of the above questions becomes difficult. Without the proper contextual references, identifying them becomes impossible, yet there is room for interpretation. The location is the popular tourist attraction Battery Park in Manhattan. The costumed Statue of Liberty poses for travelers from all over the world as his business, providing onlookers with evidence of the United States, as if to say, “I have been there!” The artist, on his first trip to the States, requests a photograph with The Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty takes his standard posture, while the artist asks a passerby to release the shutter, creating the photograph of the two masked men.

If we know one of the masked men is the artist, then the questions become: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here? Yet, it is still difficult to answer these questions if the evidence of the artist’s actual location is suspicious. Here, the artist, Zhu Feng hoods his face by the sweatshirt to exemplify his status as displaced, accentuating a cultural dislocation. As he said: “although I am in the United States, the language barrier and culture differences make communication impossible; my eyes, ears and mouth don’t seem function well.” The loss of the artist’s ability to talk and listen creates a dilemma; although he is physically in the United States, his loss of communication ability and possible understanding of the society make his stay doubtful: whether or not he has actually been to the United States seems in question.

Within this series of images, some were taken on city streets, some were tourist attractions, such as former site of the World Trade Center, the flight 93 crash site, etc. (Liu Congyun)