Ro Jae Li is an artist born and raised in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
With a background in ceramics, she explores the extension of the body through sculptural garments.
She received her BFA in crafts and design at National Taiwan University of Arts and is currently pursuing an MDes in Fashion, Body, and Garment at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.
I’m a very emotional person. I often get overwhelmed with my emotions and they always take over my body. That is what I am trying to visualize.
There are a lot of meanings behind fruit.
First I’m from Taiwan, a tropical country, and I was around a lot of fruits growing up, so I think that’s why my connection to fruit is strong.
A fruit is an outcome of reproduction, a result of mating. It’s also a beginning to a new life, it protects and nourishes the seeds. Its aroma, sweetness and juiciness is seductive, lures others to eat it and through that it is brought to a further place to start over again. Reproduce, the life mission a plant.
I find the similarities between me and a fruit very interesting. My relationship to my mother wasn’t the best growing up. But as I grew older and left home, I started to realize how much of my mother I see in myself, and how I’m gradually turning into her. The course of events I saw in the mirror: seeing myself in denial, seeing myself struggle to shake away her shadow, and at last, my acceptance of her existence.
I am the result of reproduction. I am learning to accept that part of myself, and through that, trying to develope into a new self.