Transition ~ Seeing Beyond
A Solo Exhibition by JC Jessie 2024
Fanrong Arts Museum, 56 Cultural Park, Suzhou, China
This artistic series explores the rich heritage of Chinese landscape painting and its contemporary relevance. The project creates a continuous dialogue between tradition and modernity, nature and human emotions by fusing traditional Chinese landscape elements with Western painting materials, methodology, and digital technology.
The exhibition takes inspiration from the Tang Dynasty poem “Zhongnan bieye” by Wang Wei, which beautifully captures the ever-changing aspects of nature through the observation of clouds rising and raining. The artworks explore the mindset of embracing hope and change, rather than succumbing to disappointment.
Integrating the idea of “embroidery” into Western art originated from the artist’s research journey in 2018, which explored the history and material culture of Cantonese opera costumes in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou. Chinese embroidery has played a significant role in shaping the history and development of Hong Kong, particularly in the realm of Cantonese opera costumes since World War II.
Incorporating embroidery features from Cantonese opera costumes, the series aims to reinterpret the “Chinese landscape” innovatively, considering visual fields, composition, and pigment textures. Pushing the boundaries of artistic expression, the project reimagines the characteristics of embroidery within the context of Chinese landscapes. Through this innovative reinterpretation of techniques, composition, and texture, the exhibition offers viewers a fresh perspective on visual appreciation, unveiling new horizons to explore.
As the realms of ancient and contemporary intersect, the transformative power of art becomes evident. Engaging with this exhibition, viewers are invited to embrace new possibilities that challenge existing boundaries and perspectives, celebrating the harmonious blend of Chinese and Western influences.
JC Jessie’s belief in the power of narrative lies in one’s somatic history which carries the cultural marks of one’s DNA origin to be spiritually and physically manifested. Her works become a platform to transmit a unique visual narrative into a contemporary context.
Being a visual storyteller, Jessie exercises “ Old into New”, “ East meets West” and “Multimedia Exploration” concepts into her works to unroll one’s traditional surreal and sacred knowledge in the global village, a continuation of the realization of the gendered self, as if the self identifies with the cultural elements, that may decipher the identity to entertain doubt to interrogate its contextual approaches and identity policies, the possibility of the conversion and reinterpretation of the traditional culture system, question the existing cultural and social boundaries, and the dichotomy between formality and freedom, natural and artificial, ancient and contemporary which its relevance may implicate in a broader social and cultural ambiance.
Through a series of captivating artworks from 2021 to 2023, the exhibition creatively uses traditional Chinese literati landscape painting to visualize the passage of time. It blends Chinese landscape elements and Cantonese opera costumes’ material culture, technical ideas of embroidery, and Western painting incorporating the water boundaries, clouds, mountains, Chinese embroidery, and Western painting techniques. This fusion of concepts represents a process of contextual reconstruction and artistic regeneration, reflecting the harmonious blend of Chinese and Western influences.