PUBLISHED : Thursday, 25 June, 2009, 4:00pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 19 October, 2016, 1:11pm
HK Magazine: How did the idea for this photo exhibition come about?
Siu Ding: Last year, I posted some semi-nude photos of myself on Facebook. Shortly afterwards, my former lecturer from Polytechnic University asked me to speak at a General Education seminar to share my views on the human body. Then the studio owner at the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre invited me to hold a photo exhibition. I asked some of my photographer friends to help. They had never taken nude photos, but we decided to give it a go anyway. Fortunately, my boyfriend doesn’t mind at all.
HK: Are you confident about how your body looks?
SD: Actually, I never used to like my body that much. At school, anyone who didn’t fall into the “normal” category were laughed at—girls with flat chests, or like me, girls with big breasts. Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m more confident about my body. Rather, I understand myself better.
HK: Some say that when it comes to nude photography, the line between art and pornography can be quite a fine one. What’s your take?
SD: I’d say what I am doing is art. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s a performance. There is a sense of artistic responsibility here. One visitor commented that art doesn’t necessarily have to be naked, but I ask, why can’t I be naked when I am performing art?
HK: What other feedback have you gotten so far?
SD: Some people say that with art anything goes. Some see it as self-promotion and that I do it because I have big breasts. Some girls are inspired, and say that they want to do the same.
HK: How do you feel about what people say?
SD: In Hong Kong, it seems that everything has to have a label. In my opinion, there is no need to define what I am doing, or decide whether it is art or not. Neither is it a problem if people choose to view my photos as pornography. Why should we ask people to see things in a certain way? Some people think that I must be an oddball to have done something like this. But should we be asking, instead, why we find it weird in the first place.
original link:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/hk-magazine/article/2029881/siu-ding-aka-liu-ngan-ling
