My Imaginary Friend I Siliang Ma

School of Fine Art, Photography

Siliang Ma’s background in fashion photography has led his practice into an examination of the way in which conventional visual symbols transform and mutate. He has worked for a variety of different clients in China and contributed editorials to magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His work has appeared in a recent Thames and Hudson publication, Fashion China, but his practice now transcends this and investigates contemporary politics and the history of art.

On My Imaginary Friend: 

“Skepticism is the main tone in my art practice. As an experienced advertising photographer, I do not trust photographs, as an individual who was raised in an authoritarian country I do not trust media. These distrusts destabilised my cognition of surroundings and sometimes unfamiliarised solid truth. I have been inspired to experiment on what could potentially emerge from unstable value.

My Imaginary Friend is a re-examination of my former portraiture practice in which a personal identity is performed or idealised in front of the lens. In this work I instead constructed a purely fictional figure who reflected my political concerns with the role of the individual and his condition under China’s authoritarian rule. To me, the process of visualising a subject is also a process to re-examine reality.”

Year: 2014

Edition: 1/7 

Image Size: 48.8cm x 65 cm (With frame: 62.8 x 79 cm)

Paper: Hahnemühle Photo Rag

Frame: Solid white maple frame with white passe-partout