Skin Deep_Chun Hua Catherine Dong

“Skin Deep” is a series of photograph with Augmented Reality component that explores surface of thing – face- in relation Asian shame culture through performing self-portraits. Chinese shame is rooted on the concept of face. Shame is used as a tool of social control and harmony, as a way to prevent citizens— especially women—from acting in ways that might disrupt the status quo. In “Skin Deep,” I translate the word “shame” to a cultural symbol and create a series of ID -card photographs by concealing my face in Chinese symbolic silk fabrics. The act of masking is a performance of submission to the powerful effects of shame in which I obliterate my own individuality while being completely absorbed into a cultural identity. It refers both the quality of only being seen for my Chinese background as an immigrant in Canada, and the subsequent lack of acknowledgement of my full personhood as a girl when in China. “Skin Deep” is an act of drawing back the curtain and pointing to the deeply embedded feelings