Black Certificate

Black Certificate, 2020, Performance, 7’11”

Black Certificate is a performance that encompasses all elements like sculpture, installation, lighting, sound, interactivity, video, painting, drawing, and so on. Performance can be site-specific, narrative, conceptual, and interactive. The outcomes were multi-dimensional display works of video, photography, installation, and drawing. It was a bit like a ritual using certificates with a special meaning. Videos were from multiple cameras on one screen. Yunqiu Li had done some drawings on the certificates and even destroyed them (the certificates) based on her thoughts about honor, life, and herself. Certificates after use could be destroyed as recycling, which also can become a drawing and installation or sculpture.

Yunqiu Li thinks that certificates might concern the wider reflection to honor and self-criticism. She focuses on her feelings and personal experiences to narrow down the big philosophical problems of human beings. The certificate is a symbol of affirmation and recognition which can bring us a sense of honor and a sense of belonging. So, when we were children, we always wanted certificates. Don’t we need these things when we grow up? When we grow up, we have to admit that the feeling of certificate freshness is too short that we haven’t enjoyed the sense of honor and belonging, these gratifications have disappeared.