Chairs are among the most ordinary objects in our daily lives.  Various types of chairs serve a variety of functions including personal usage, social motive, religious intention and political purpose; for example, stool, recliner, bench, cathedra, and throne.  This common piece of furniture also expresses the wealth and status of the owners in its materials and ornamentations.  The chairs of kings, queens, high ranking and wealthy people use more embellishments and expensive materials than chairs used by the poor.  Far beyond their practical use to rest our bodies, chairs also have symbolic meanings of authority, domination, autonomy and power in a social structure.  A chair can become a potent symbol that lures and entices people who look for prestige and power.  

 

In the artistic world, the chair has been used in art and as art.  The rustic chair in yellow that Vincent van Gogh painted in 1888 has moved many viewers’ hearts throughout generations by his compassionate brushstrokes.  The Bicycle Wheel consisting of a bicycle fork with front wheel mounted upside down on a wooden stool by Marcel Duchamp has changed the art world by initiating the movement of conceptual art and opening the direction of art making from readymades.  The electric chair which the pop artist Andy Warhol used in 1967 draws attention to the horror of capital punishment/execution and is an indictment of the system.

 

Although chairs have been used and depicted in the artistic world, their symbolic powers in the social world have not been explored as often. My sculpture project aims to explore the relationship between the chair and its symbolic power.  Carving chairs from plaster allows me to highlight and reinterpret the symbolic meaning of the chairs.  By carving them in small sizes, 5x5x10 inches, I re-contextualize the power that the chair represents by providing beholders a viewpoint of observance and reflection.  Through these aesthetic objects, I want to make social and political comments on the hidden power at play in our daily activities.  The awareness is not so much to be free from the powers, but to free the powers for relationship, empowerment, collaboration, and common good.