Shifting Artistic Identity on Canvas: From ‘Painter-Worker’ to ‘Painter-Artist’ in a Commercial Painting Community

This study investigates how painters in Village F use artworks to facilitate their identity shift from ‘painter-workers’ to ‘painter-artists’. Focusing on the painters’ interpretation of the visual contents, types of paints, and painting techniques, this article highlights the artworks’ role as a medium for identity construction, thus avoiding the silencing of artworks. Drawing on interview and observation data, it argues that the artwork offers a space where art/commerce negotiate with each other, and where the painters are reconciled with their past experience and identity. The complexity and ambiguity of artworks allow juxtaposition of various interpretations by the artists, which deconstructs the dualistic view of art/commerce and authentic/inauthentic artistic images. By introducing what the artists do in addition to what they say, this study views artistic identity as emerging from the interaction between the artists and artworks. It thus dialogues with the production of culture perspective and the interactionist approach to the construction of an artistic identity, and responds to the calling of bringing the artworks back in the sociology of art. It concludes by discussing the findings’ broader implications, the methodological effectiveness, and the limitations of this research.