Mind racing, body still – for Ming, being a nude figure model is emotionally fraught work

As a Chinese woman living in Canada, Ming Huang’s time working as a nude figure model for art classes was fraught with psychological complexities, hidden from view for those who drew her. While in China her figure was considered bigger than the feminine ideal, a continent away she found her body was considered ‘beautiful’, ‘sculptural’ and ‘exotic’ – sentiments sometimes verbalised by the art students. In this brief animation, the Chinese-born Los Angeles-based artist Danski Tang brings her friend Ming Huang’s experiences to evocative animated life, using a moody colour palette and a sparse, bass-heavy score to probe the silent struggles that characterised her experience.