CRUEL LUXURIES 殘酷的奢侈品
On 1st and 2nd December 2017, the Cheung Chau Wave festival hosted the first stage of my project Cruel Luxuries 殘酷的奢侈品 .
It's an exploration of the cruelty behind many of humanity's highest or luxurious art forms, from large (the Pyramids) to small (cochineal to produce organic red dye). For this project, I've chosen to incorporate several aspects:
* Silk created by worms that, typically, die in silk production
* Silhouettes of sharks fins which are often cruelly harvested – Hong Kong is where half the world's fins are traded
* The exquisite, eerie tones produced by castrati singers (a practice once implicitly encouraged by the Catholic Church in Italy where women were not allowed to sing in churches), singers who had operas written especially for them by some of Western classical music's famous composers like Handel, and who impacted western opera in ways that continue today
A reflection on the duality of beauty and its opposite, which are often simultaneously present in art and culture worldwide.. I was very happy to share it with Hong Kong and the Cheung Chau community in its earliest form.
The installation / performance included a total of 15 meters of Suzhou silk printed with sharks fins from my Typhoon Cyanotype series
Summarized from https://elizabethbriel.com/cruel-luxuries-hong-kong-beta
and some images online here https://www.ebriel.com/#/cruel-luxuries/
Elizabeth Briel, a Kowloon-based American artist who recently returned to HK. Site-specific Installation / Performance: the first phase of "Cruel Luxuries [beta]", a reflection on the duality of beauty and its opposite, which are often simultaneously present in art and culture worldwide. Cruel Luxuries explores the brutality behind many of humanity's luxuries and beauty, and what have been considered our 'highest' art forms, for example: * Killing of silkworms during silk production * Sharks fins brutally harvested * The grueling training for mastering western classical music, including the ultimate sacrifice for castrati (castrated) singers - whose impact on western opera continues today You are invited to visit the ephemeral installation / performance with artist Elizabeth Briel, the first stage of "Cruel Luxuries", a work-in-progress that will tour the US in summer 2018.
回流香港的美國藝術家Elizabeth Briel。特定場地的裝置/表演：“殘忍奢侈品”的第一階段，反映了美的雙重性及其相反之處，而這一點往往同時出現在全球的藝術和文化中。殘酷的奢侈品探索了許多人類的奢侈品和美麗背後的殘酷，以及被認為是我們“最高”的藝術形式，例如： *絲綢生產過程中殺死蠶 *鯊魚鰭殘酷收穫 *掌握西方古典音樂的艱苦訓練，包括對閹割（閹割）歌手的最終犧牲 - 對西方歌劇的影響持續至今 您將被邀請參觀藝術家伊麗莎白•布瑞爾（Elizabeth Briel）的短暫裝置/表演，這是“殘酷奢侈品”的第一階段，將於2018年夏天在美國巡迴演出。