Leslie (Rui Tao), through between performance, moving image and other art formats, continuously delves into questions around identity, memory and group relations, whilst also exploring the nature of human feelings in the face of traumas and various social problems. For her, those kinds of emotions and connections in human life forms the very ‘foundation of her creation’, and these deep roots drive her to produce art works, through various media.
Since 2021, Leslie has created art in the form of 360 degree VR moving images. The very seeds and origin of her work in this area delve into human emotions and reflections after facing trauma and other social issues. This, in combination with other novel techniques such as ‘reconstructing memory’, ‘interaction in virtual reality’ and designing scenes to allow for the juxtaposition of light and shadow, opens up realms of possibilities for new art media.
Besides this, Leslie also uses still photographs as a different form of art expression. Initially, still photographs was only used as a record of her creative process but she quickly realised that this medium is perfect to document emotions as snapshots in time, across time. This is further amplified when consolidated and completed as a series, becoming another method for her to elicit the feeling of conflict of dreams, with reality.
In her exploration of what it means to be human, to dive deeper into emotions and adding more ‘humanity’ into her art expressions, Leslie prefers to use performance experimental video. The focus of her performance experimental video focuses on exploring the difference in inner psyche and outer behaviors amongst human beings who grew up in different environments. Masks, are always used, and the subjects are placed within a ‘topic’, surrounded by iconic tools such as flowers or red lines. These works are characterised through the sedulous avoidance of facial emotion and verbal language, which may influence the perception of the audience, as Leslie wants the audience to connect with the art naturally and on a more instinctual level.
Throughout the 5 years where Leslie has explored and created, immersive experience and interaction has always been a key tenet of her art works. This focus stems from her desire to dissolve the boundaries between her works and the audience, which she has achieved through both 360 immersive moving imagec and other combined media. For example, with the sculpture art works she created this year, Leslie used combined media to define and encompass the ‘Unlimited’ into otherwise still art works. Audiences are invited to interact with and ‘imprint’ their different feelings onto the art works. ‘Each feeling will be allowed’, Leslie said that those kinds of immersive experiences will become the direction of her future exploration, at least in the near future.
Leslie’s art works always have a strong sense of her personal identity and style, ‘a calling card’ of her explorations into humanity and feelings, using different interesting media combined with interactions amongst audiences, slowly inspiring and instilling deeper emotional questions onto the audience.
