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| Diana Lui
黛安娜-雷/简介 黛安娜-雷是一位出生在马来西亚的华人，她的艺术领域同时涉及影像和图片。在洛杉矶生活学习了12年后去了比利时，最后来到了法国。雷在加州的洛杉矶学习美术。随后进入世界闻名的艺术先锋派学府，位于加州帕沙第纳的艺术中心设计学院，并获得了摄影和美术学士学位。 在巴黎生活的十多年中，黛安娜-雷给来自欧洲、北美、东南亚等数十家杂志社拍摄照片。除了摄影，她还在油画、笔墨画、木炭画、装置和短片摄制等领域不断探求新的媒介和主题。她举办过数十次的个展和群展，其作品在中国、马来西亚、新加坡、比利时、法国巴黎、墨西哥及委内瑞拉多次获奖。 黛安娜-雷与位于巴黎的东京美术馆馆长、维多利亚博物馆馆长、位于意大利的Galleria d'Arte Moderna Bologna创意人、位于纽约的创意时代艺术馆负责人和位于德国的kunstwerk艺术馆创意人齐名被由Mandarina Duck所组织的艺术委员会推选为当今最具代表性100个现代艺术家之一。 她一生中坚持的目标是从14年前开始的，她要带着她的8 x 10英寸取景式相机走遍天涯，记录下在旅程中所遇到的人们，他们的内心、私秘、人性的真实写照。接下来，她把这些图像还原、放大，（有的高至两米）在各种艺术节、画廊、博物馆、多样性艺术空间中展出。 近期，她的黑白8 x 10肖像获得了第二十届法国布鲁斯杰出青年摄影家奖章，这幅黑白8 x 10肖像同时还为她赢得了柯达影评奖银奖。 2003年9月正值国际摄影节，黛安娜-雷在风景如画的中国古城平遥（1997年被联合国教科文组织评为世界遗产里程碑）举办了展览。在平遥举办的次此国际摄影节是中国有史以来摄影届最高的一次盛会。随后，黛安娜-雷的当代艺术展览移师北京千年博物馆。 黛安娜-雷对影像的喜好与其对摄影的偏爱难分伯仲。她更愿意把影像定义为一种“讲述”。最早摄制的两部影片即是对她的黑白肖像的进一步研究。在纽约电影学院的协助下，她的第一部短片诞生与2002年。名为“四维”，通过对卡泼卫勒舞（一种源于非洲把民间舞蹈和自卫动作结合在一起的巴西舞蹈）的描摹，阐述了社会、性别阶级制度的建立。该影片随后入选2002年度法国克莱堤国际电影节。去年她自编自导了一部30分钟的短片，在britanny的brehat岛上摄制完成。这部名为“猴岛”（讲述了精神失常者内心的诗性和理性）的短片将与“四维”同2005、2006年度的肖像摄影作品一起于美术馆和画廊中展出。黛安娜-雷的作品被私人收藏家、博物馆及世界各艺术机构所珍藏。
DIANA LUI / BIOGRAPHY Diana Lui is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker of Chinese origin from Malaysia. She lived and studied in Los Angeles for 12 years before moving to Europe in 1993 (Belgium and France respectively). After studying Fine Arts in UCLA (University California Los Angeles), she transferred to the world-renowned college for avant-garde design and other visual art forms, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Photography and Fine Arts. Based in Paris for almost 10 years, Diana Lui works as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines in Europe, North America, South-East Asia. Despite working as a photographer, she continues to explore new themes and mediums in photography, oil paintings, ink and charcoal drawings, installations and short films. She has exhibited her photographs and art work in solo and group exhibits and won several awards in the USA, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Belgium, Paris (France), Mexico, and Venezuela. She was selected together with 100 other artists to represent today's young contemporary artists by the Search for Art Committee (organized by Mandarina Duck) which included curators/directors from Palais de Tokyo, Victoria & Albert Museum, Galleria d'Arte Moderna Bologna (Italy), Creative Time (New York), and Kunstwerk (Germany). Her ongoing and lifelong project (which began 14 years ago) is carrying her large 8x10 view camera all over the world to document, what she calls "intimate/psychological/anthropological" portraits of people she encounters during her travels. She then transforms her images into life-size prints (up to 2 meters high) for exhibitions in art festivals, galleries, museums, and alternative art spaces. Recently, she won France’s 20th Bourse du Talent (Young Talent Award for Photography) for her black and white 8x10 portraits and she won second place for the Kodak Critics’ Award also for her black and white 8x10 portraits. During September of 2003, she exhibited in the beautiful ancient town
of Ping Yao in China (classified as a World Heritage Monument by UNESCO
in 1997) for the Ping Yao Parallel to her love for photography is filmmaking, or as she prefers to define it as today’s "story-telling". Her first two films are an extended study of her black and white portraits. In collaboration with the New York Film Academy, her first short film was made in 2002. Titled "Four Play", this film reveals how social and sexual hierarchies are established through the capoeira, a Brazilian martial art/dance. Consequently, it was selected for the 2002 Festival Internationale de Films des Femmes at Creteil, France. Last year, she wrote and directed a 30-minute film which was shot on the Island of Brehat in Britanny. This film entitled "An Island for Monkeys" (an exploration of the poetic and rational minds of the insane) and ‘Four Play” will be shown in museums and galleries together with her photographic portraits in 2005 and 2006. Diana Lui’s photographic work is collected by private collectors, museums and art institutions worldwide.
The portraits presented here are a selection of a large body of work the artist began 14 years ago. The artist works with an 8x10 view camera to ensure optimum quality and to maintain a human scale between the viewer and portrait when she enlarges her portraits up to 2 meters high. Her “portraits” of trees and landscapes are enlarged to an environmental scale of 3 to 5 meters in length or in height. “I’m looking for the face I had Photographing people and my environment has become an absolute necessity in my life. I am not a photographer by choice but by fate. I am of Chinese origin and was born in Malaysia in 1968. Due to a sensitive political climate and with little or no opportunity for a better education in Malaysia, I migrated to North America at the age of 14. I lived in Los Angeles, California for 12 years and have since migrated to Belgium and finally France. Gradually, I became part of a growing hybrid generation of individuals who have been uprooted several times from her mother country and other adopted countries. Globalization and the ease and speed with which we travel today have helped to accelerate many families’ and individuals’ transient relocation from country to country. This existence without a place to truly call “home” has created a deep sense of “paranoia” among those of my generation. Somewhere between the age of 19 and 25, I lost my sense of “self”. Who am I? The incapacity to overcome this rootlessness has urgently prompted me to rediscover and “re-define” our “roots and origins” today. I find myself searching obsessively for my “multiple roots” not only within my genetic/ethnic/social/adopted heritage but also within an existential context. Existential being, through the physical, psychological presence of others and the omnipresence of nature, I recognize myself. My work is made of 3 interwoven themes: trees, individuals, and sexuality. The innate, primitive attraction I have for nature, especially for trees is naturally due to their “rootedness”. Their silent omnipresence, their existence with or without man’s intervention give evidence to my “existing within a natural, raw space.” In the last 14 years of wandering, I have photographed individuals who either share similar experiences as I or have nothing at all in common with me. Each portrait reflects, “re-defines” and “re-establishes” my existence either through comparison or contrast. The fact that most of my portraits are of individuals with multiple ethnicity is of little or no consequence for during my research I have discovered that many of us stem not from one “root” but several. My nude portraits are yet another attempt at finding our “roots and origins”. They explore our sexuality within a social, historical, cultural, and personal context. Through these explorations I become painfully aware of my body’s physical transformations, its sensations, emotions, and the way other bodies exist, co-exist, and react within their physical environment or “intimate space”. From these physical and psychological “landmarks” or “references”(trees, individuals, & our sexuality), I see suddenly revealed to me the “essential being” existing from within. In spite of “labelling” such as “nationality, history(social, economical, cultural, political), occupation or geographical location”, which has served only to isolate us from one another, our “essential being” or “essential root” seems to persist against all “labelling” to remain whole and universal. In my photographs, I try to meet people in their “intimate space”.
I search to penetrate their interior world by sharing my own. Through
their eyes, their speech, their body gestures, their naked or clothed
selves, their home, their willingness or hesitation to let me in, I
find clues to the person within. In trying to understand them, I am
trying to understand myself. At moments I am terribly humbled by the
absolute trust they seem to reserve only for me. Their integrity shows
that my existence is real. They see me, they hear me, they feel me,
they recognize me, they love me, therefore I and they must exist.  “树，个体和性” 黛安娜-雷 作品简述 “在此展出的作品仅是此系列作品的一组，艺术家14年前开始了对这一系列作品的创作。 “I’m looking for the face I had before the world was made.” “我在寻觅世界混沌之初的我的面庞。” 用相片记录下我身边的人和环境已经成为了我生活中的必须。成为摄影师并非我的选择，而是命运的安排。我，拥有中国血统。1968年生于马来西亚。由于当时的政治原因，无法在马来西亚得到良好的教育，14岁时我移民到了北美。在加州的洛杉矶生活了12年后我去了比利时，最后来到了法国。逐渐地，我成为了血统混杂的人群中的一员。被母亲国和驻留国不停驱赶着。现在的世界，全球一体化，愈加便利的游走，不断提升的速度，使得越来越多的家庭和单身在国与国之间短暂停留。对“家”的概念的缺失，在像我这样的人群中蔓延成了一种 “偏执”。在我19岁到25岁的时候，我把自己弄丢了。 我是谁？对这种毫无根基感的无能为力迫使我对现时“根源”的重新发现和重新定义。不仅在我的血液，宗族，族群，遗传中重复固执地寻找我的“多元根基”，在任何存在实体中我都没有放弃过追寻。透过其他人们身体，心理的表象，透过无所不在的自然属性，在那些存在实体中我终于找到了自己。树，个体和性交织成为我作品的主题。 自然于我与生俱来的吸引，尤其树木，显然是源自它们深刻的“根基”感。他们在无声的包容中无所不在，毫不被干涉地生存在自然中，用它们初生的姿势。 我所拍摄的有关赤裸的图像是我对自身“根源”的另一次追寻。通过社会，历史，文化，个性，被称为性的生命属性被不断打开。透过这些探索，我痛苦地意识到了自身的扭曲。感知的，情绪的。其他个体的存在与共存方式，以及对生理环境和“隐私空间”的反应。 借助这些生理，心理的“路标”抑或“参照物”（树，个体和性），事物内在的本质存在突然在我面前变得豁然开朗。 在“国籍、背景、社会、经济、文化、政治、职业或地理坐标”这些只能用来深化个人不同的“标签”之外，有一种叫做“本质”和“根源”的属性悖“标签”存在，使整个世界得以保持平和。 在我的摄影作品里，我试图通过其“隐私空间”与他人相识。用我张开的内心世界寻求一条到达他人内心的途径。他们的眼神、他们的语言、他们的身体动作、他们赤裸的抑或被包裹着的自我、他们对于我这个突然闯入者的犹豫不决，让我开始走进这些“陌生人”的内心。为了要了解他们，我尝试着了解自己。但有时，他们交给我的这种极度信任会使我陷入一股强烈的自我卑微感中。这些人的正直和坦诚让我感觉到自身的存在。他们看到我，他们听到我，他们感觉我，他们与我相识，他们爱我，因此他们和我必须存在。  /Crits on black and white portraits/ “Diana Lui’s photographs bring to mind the ancient chinese symbol of harmony, the Yin and Yang, the harmony of the masculine and feminine. Her portraits are a combination of the “hardness” of the 8x10 camera format and the “softness” of her subtle portrayals. The camera she works with is considered by most photographers of today’s digital age too difficult to use because of its bulky form, weight and its lack of mechanical flexibility and ease during a shooting session. Yet, this large format camera produces a sharpness and detail that is better than any other camera. In this sense, Diana Lui has a masculine approach, the physical and technical aspect to creating her images. On the other hand, the portrayal of her portraits are quiet and understated. She does not use overt gestures or props, nothing that screams, rather, her images speak softly. They are subtle and feminine. Her portraits remind me of ripples in a pond. Each portrait is a pond where a drop hits the water at the very center - the subject - then the ripples vibrate from the center and move towards other parts of the pond - the rest of the picture. The subject and his/her environment are simply connected. The environment surrounding each subject contains a minimal of detail, objects that hint only at the essential being of each person photographed. Her portraits show neither too much nor too little. Diana’s images bring together the mechanics of her camera, the sharpness of the silver and the mystery and sensuality of the person photographed at exactly the point where the “hardness” and “softness” touch. Here, her images stop and begin to prick your subconscience like a pin, softly, slowly but not so hard that you recoil. In this manner, the viewer finds him/herself drawn irresistibly again and again to the quiet enigma of the portraits. In the history of photography, Diana Lui’s work can be compared to
that of August Sander’s portraits of the German people. However, where
both their black and white portraits are subtle and realistic, Diana
takes off from August Sander’s objectivity with a lyricism and sensitivity
of her own interpretation. The harmonious combination of masculine objectivity
with a feminine lyricism makes her work unique among the world of portrait
and art photography today.”
黑白肖像点评 黛安娜-雷的作品蕴涵着深厚的中国古代阴阳和谐的传统哲学理念，她的作品刚柔并劲，包容了8 x 10 英寸取景式相机带来的硬实感和来自其肖像作品内部的纤细触感。 黛安娜-雷所使用的取景式相机，因为它庞大的体积，更不轻巧，在拍摄过程中繁冗的使用步骤，被数码时代大多数人认为是件非常困难的事情。然而，这种大型相机却在细节和色彩对比度上有着其它相机所不可比拟的优势。在这个方面，黛安娜-雷用刚毅的执着，身体力行去完成她的每一幅作品。 另一方面，她的作品是静谧和含蓄的。她从不利用夸张的手段，歇斯底里地来渲染她的作品。相反，在她的图像中娓娓道来的是一种微妙的来自女性的柔韧。 她的肖像使我联想到了湖心泛起的涟漪。她的图片就似一汪湖水，主题好似湖心，细浪从湖心层层向外延伸，荡漾到图片的其他部分。在她的作品中，主题和环境有着单纯的关联。围绕每个主题的外部环境，都蕴藏着极简抽象派艺术的丰富细节，依照导入画面的物体按图索骥，黛安娜-雷告诉你在她眼中看到的人物本质。她的肖像作品恰如其分，拿捏得当。 黛安娜-雷的影像，糅合了取景式相相机的机械质感，凝胶的色差敏感度以及在画面中出现的人物内在声色所带来的神秘感，将“坚毅”和“柔韧”完美结合随之升华。然而，她的影像就在这里嘎然而止，开始刺进你的潜意识，轻柔地而你也并不想反抗。这时，观者往往会发现自己已经深陷入谜团一样的人物影像中，失去了抗拒能力。 在摄影历史上，黛安娜-雷的作品可以跟德国八月的沙撒者相提并论。他们都是写实而敏感的黑白作品。黛安娜-雷用自己的抒情方式和敏锐内心对八月的沙撒者的客观属性进行了重新诠释。刚毅客体、阴柔抒情的和谐韵律使她的作品在当今的艺术摄影界独树一帜。” ----Adam Beinash,
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