| 書名title： 《漫漫地尋‧雌雌地等 Woman to Love ‧ Man to Quit》 作者author：李慧嫻 Rosanna Li |
內容intro：
少時在家溫習語文，偏愛朗讀課文，遇難字必請教長輩。長輩授以錦囊：「有字讀字，無字讀邊。」自此銘記在心，反覆練習，拆字成癖，見邊讀邊。「輩」字仰頭讀「非」，低頭讀「車」；「朗」字左瞄讀「良」，右瞥讀「月」，習以為常，亦樂此不疲。
中學受業於英文書院，始習外語，深感其重重困難。幸遇良師，傳以秘技：「讀、講、聽、寫、背之餘,思想、做夢，莫忘英語。」於是「全方位」攻略，走火入魔。心想眼看，日思夜夢，文字世界頓化作花花字母圖案。「輩」字演繹為 ‘This is not a car’、「朗」字演繹為 ‘Good moon’。自動轉譯，不能自拔。
This exhibition catalogue features 18 sets of ‘woman’ sculptures and 21 sets of ‘man’ sculptures created by Rosanna Li. Chinese characters are ideographical. Rosanna Li is fond of Chinese characters and enjoys making fun of the phonetics and semantics of the language. With the 18 sets of female earthen sculptures, titled ‘Women Unwanted’, Li disregards the traditional meanings of the character, which features a ‘radical’ female ‘女’ and generates a new conceived meaning that questions the identity of the modern woman.
Li had a hard time learning English as a foreign language at a young age, but managed to master the alphabet and spent lots of time pouring over the English dictionary. Now, as an independent woman revisiting the English dictionary, her concern is that what she has learned is not essentially right – ‘mankind’, ‘manpower’, ‘manipulate’, ‘menopause’, ‘menstruation’, ‘man of letters’ – and realizes that all her life spent learning English is ‘with man’; ‘woman’ is non-existent. With mixed feeling of joy and frustration, Li created her 21 sets of ‘man’ sculptures teasingly playing on English ‘man-ly’ words. Her works were displayed in an exhibition titled ‘man, I wish I knew how to quit you!’
The juxtaposition of new and traditional meanings of each Chinese character - the woman radical or the English word with its ‘man’ prefix, presents a unique portrayal of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as earthen sculptures, often prompting a laugh, yet perceptively expressing the independent voice of the modern Chinese woman.
作者簡介about the author：
李慧嫻 – 在大不列顛學習陶瓷，但學藝不精，獨沽一味 -「脂肪」。廿多年來，泡製「豬腩肉」巡迴演出，包括穗、深、港、澳、台、泛珠江三角、亞洲、澳洲、歐洲、南美洲等地。駐場香港理工大學設計學院，邊學邊教；既誠惶誠恐出任康樂及文化事務處(香港藝術)顧問，又膽粗粗成為當代陶藝協會(香港)創會會員兼過氣會長。
Ceramic artist Li Wei Han loves to muddle in the 'clay'. Gracefully shaped and wittily understated, Li's 'fat' figurines are charming, friendly and down-to-earth. Though most of the time, she works with clay. Recently, she has also acquired an intense interest in employing mixed media and 'ready-mades' into her works.
Li studied studio ceramics and art education in Hong Kong and England. Winner of the 1985 Hong Kong Urban Council Fine Art Award in Ceramics, the 1999 Hong Kong Artists' Guild Artists of the Year Award in Sculpture, and the 2000 Silver Award in Ceramic of the Guangdong Museum of Art. Li is also the founding member and the Chair of the Contemporary Ceramic Society (Hong Kong). Li exhibits widely in Hong Kong, China, and overseas, either solo or group exhibitions. Her work can be found in the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.
Presently, Li is an assistant professor in the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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