Artist, Evelyn Taocheng Wang: My name is Evelyn Taocheng Wang. I am a painter. This hand scroll is called Witches are Flowers Sisters. It is based on the book Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women by Silvia Federici.
This book focus on the history of how women were defined as witches, starting from European late medieval period. She is analyzing witch-hunting history and persecution to make women keep quiet and obey their husband, to prevent them doing gossip, and becoming independent. She described different systems against women until even today, especially women of color.
The book also described how the glamorousness of women was seen as an evil quality to trap men. I think flowers represent feminine temperament and the power of being glamorous. So I painted many flowers and they are sisters to each other.
I think hand scrolls made by scholar-painter in ancient Asian countries, they are the ancient form of film and telling story. You open the scroll by your left hand and read from the right side to the left. I love ink because the powdery and luminescence of watery quality of color reminds me the quality of being woman.
I take this feminine quality and put them into the format of scroll, which I see as a metaphor of the womb. I see the womb as an organ which provides possibility. I think this womb protects me and gives me shelter. It gave me a certain freedom.