Cheese,
01/2020,
1m × 1m
Because of its pronunciation, say “Cheese” is usually used as an action for motivating model’s facial expression in occidental countries (or countries that was ever colonized by the Occidental). Cheese becomes a special object: not only refers to a common food, but also denominating a certain body action, represents everyday photography practice in a linguistic level.
In Cheese, by photographing and exhibiting once specific cheese, the identity of this common food flickers because of the presence of the viewer: not only as a common object, but also a symbol refering to this photographic practice itself as well as the call for a bodily involvement. There is no longer a specific spectated object and a spectator, the identities of subject and object are transforming and shifting simultaneously.
Other issues may emerge in the researchful practice of this project — the equivalent in Chinese photographic practice is ‘eggplant’, and Chinese are not familiar to cheese. This situation made a difference of Cheese’s interpretation between Chinese and occidental context. From the persepective of identity politics that is familiar in western discourse, will Cheese becomes different from the work