I begin this series of work in 2012 when I was semi-obsessed with lurking in the “Off My Chest” section on Reddit.  I was thinking about why I or anyone else would be interested in the lives and secrets of distant acquaintances and total strangers, whether it is in the form of gossip, tabloids, tell-all autobiographies, or in my case – anonymous confessions on the Internet.  My conclusion is that we are trying to find aspects of other people that we can relate to, especially those aspects of ourselves that we cannot disclose to those around us.

I started hand copying the content of these confessions, and then made a series of paintings, collages and installations based on those copies and original Internet post.  Each new piece is created by copying and manipulating the previous piece in some way, and consequently the last piece of the series does not resemble the original piece in material, appearance or content.  The pieces also became progressively more conventional and marketable.

Yiran Sun