Contributing Artists

Kanthy Peng

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

Portrait Tutorial features an unsuccessful “coming out” experience of Kanthy Pang (BFA 2016). Peng encodes her homosexual relationship within a series of photography portrait tutorials made for coaching her parents back in China. Peng and her girlfriend playfully test the boundaries of subtlety in these videos. Along with photography work and a recorded Skype session, Peng displays the bare bones of her physical separation and psychological alienation from her family. The conversations between daughter and parents shift cautiously from concealment to reveal, and denial to possible acceptance. The exhibition aims to highlight the discomfort of communication and mutual understandinf that occurs between the generations of family across different cultures, value systems, and geographies. Portrait Tutorial (the video) is a tutorial series compiled of eight sections. Each section aims to teach a different portrait photography skill – like aperature control, color and composition. The video gradually hints at the growing porximity between Peng and her model through the increasingly intimate environment, ambiguous instructive language and suggestive touching. Critique on “Portrait Tutorial” is a recorded Skype concersation between Peng’s parents, her girlfriend and herself. Although her parents critique seems to surround Peng’s tutorial series, it too, reveals their evasion about the true message of what their daughter is tryingt o convey. Seven portrait photos taken by the artist’s parents show what they have learnt from The Portrait Tutorial. The irony of the closeness revealed in these photos mirrors and reinforces the concealed relationship between the artist and her model/girlfriend. Culminating the exhibition, Introduction to Portrait Photography integrates Peng’s tutorials and her parents’ photos into a textbook. By doing so, Portrait Tutorial gives a nod to popular tutorial series and photogrpahy handbooks found on Youtube and the Internet.