My career began by teaching mathematics and publishing woodblock prints in Yunnan, a rural mountainous region close to Tibet. This outset steered the course for what became a self-appointed practice, involving grounded investigations on location and the production of art inside and outside a traditional making space. As a result, an attempt to re-frame “labor” underlies my current work, where the conditions of creation inform the outcome with accepted and debatable expertise. More precisely, I intend to expand notions of conceptualism and time. I examine and actuate idiosyncratic parameters for art-making, recognizing the instability of my body as I include movements in my drawings. I consider atypical places as studios when drying vegetable-tanned leather al fresco regardless of the weather. I also subscribe to specific durations: My ongoing series on daylight saving time, from 1 am to 1.59 am and immediately again from 1 am to 1.59 am on the first Sunday of November, gains its breadth and depth as I continue to live in the United States; I try adding to the sequence a new artwork during this “two hours” every year. Furthermore, I conduct my practice according to fluid interpretations of the artist’s responsibilities, zooming in less on rigid truth and packaged identity than on time- and sites-responsive pursuit of freedom.
As a Chinese artist in the United States, I am motivated by the globalizing planet but also ponder the risks with such mobility. Recent artistic and scholarly projects examine the Shanghai Biennale in 2000, the first international contemporary art showcase in a state-sponsored Chinese museum, as both history and the present tense. My painted works and drawings respond to this opening episode of Chinese contemporary art and its ramifications just over two decades later—specifically its concomitant interplay with the unofficial art scenes. Another current research project relates to the international programs of the Crown Point Press in the 1980s. Through this venture, artists such as Sol LeWitt, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Pat Steir produced woodblock prints with artisans in China and Japan. My inquiry surrounds these apparent yet imperfect juxtapositions of “America” and “elsewhere.” Although these movements folded in the beginning of the 1990s, I seek to extend this history through exhibition-making, a new interest and creative medium since moving to Chicago in 2023, with the possibility of a shared U.S., Chinese, and Japanese art history.
宁为太平狗, 莫做离乱人;
轻风不识字, 何必乱翻书.
As a Chinese artist in the United States, I am motivated by the globalizing planet but also ponder the risks with such mobility. Recent artistic and scholarly projects examine the Shanghai Biennale in 2000, the first international contemporary art showcase in a state-sponsored Chinese museum, as both history and the present tense. My painted works and drawings respond to this opening episode of Chinese contemporary art and its ramifications just over two decades later—specifically its concomitant interplay with the unofficial art scenes. Another current research project relates to the international programs of the Crown Point Press in the 1980s. Through this venture, artists such as Sol LeWitt, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Pat Steir produced woodblock prints with artisans in China and Japan. My inquiry surrounds these apparent yet imperfect juxtapositions of “America” and “elsewhere.” Although these movements folded in the beginning of the 1990s, I seek to extend this history through exhibition-making, a new interest and creative medium since moving to Chicago in 2023, with the possibility of a shared U.S., Chinese, and Japanese art history.
宁为太平狗, 莫做离乱人;
轻风不识字, 何必乱翻书.
