Meng Tong

In this 24-hour performance art project for the Time class. I shot a video of me painting a self-portrait with bath water in front of a mirror in a bathtub with purple water in it. In this project I wanted to express that the self in absolute privacy is the true sense of myself. The bathroom is a relatively very private space, and often we sing our emotions in the bathroom, cry in the bathroom, and secretly smear our mom’s lipstick in the bathroom…so I wanted to express this in a video like this. The purple water represents my chaotic, rich inner world. These purple liquids in turn intermingle with the me who hides my inner world. Even though I am sitting in the bathtub wearing the same clothes as usual, my world looks real, yet absurd and complicated in the self-portrait.