Year 2022
Duration: 4 hours
In the fast-paced society of a metropolitan city like London, how do people perceive and feel about the environments surrounding them?
In this social experiment, I asked 30+ strangers walking around my community to express their sensations, perceptions and feelings of being in the urban outdoor environment using oil pastels. Oil pastel is a colourful, versatile and easy-to-use medium that helps us engage directly with our feelings through physical gestures and motions. The adoption of art-making as a collaborative method of thinking and communication generates a sense of freedom amongst passers-by/strangers/onlookers as people randomly came up to express themselves and regain the childlike joy of doodling, scribbling, smudging and ultimately, spontaneous playing.
Haiyi He 