Chen Qiulin 14235, 2014 Installation Ceramics 30 -2cm/ piece Ed.1 Since Cai Lun greatly improved paper production during theEastern Han Dynasty, 25-220 AD, by using cheaper materials and making it moreaccessible to the common people, zhezhi, or paper folding, and Jianzhi,paper cutting, have had important ceremonial and decorative roles in Chinesesociety and culture. Within the past 10-15 years computers, smartphones, andcomputer games have taken captive the imaginations and ‘in between time’ timeof Chinese people replacing the more common and manual forms of ceremony anddesign with virtual and digital entertainment. Chen Qiulin’s work for the past10 years has been about memory and loss and the impact upon society of China’spolitical and economic reforms. From watching her hometown being dismantled andsubmerged in the waters of the Three Gorges Dam, to the devastation of the 2008Sichuan earthquake, she has experienced the reverberations of loss and has beentelling this story through her and others personal experiences in various waysand mediums. Chen’s newest installation work, 14,235,was produced in Jingdezhen, where the finest porcelain in the world has beenproduced for over 1,700 years. It is made up of 14,235 white porcelain zhezhiobjects. Chen’s initial installation is composed of several hundred zhezhi ofvarying sizes that are in heaps on the floor of the main gallery space. Overthe course of the show, more and more pieces will arrive and be added to the installation.Like a sea of geometric salt crystal formations they will seem to grow out intothe space until 1000’s of white porcelain zhezhi fill the gallery. When I first came to China in 2008 I noticed folded paper objectsall the time on the streets and sidewalks, around bus stops, plazas, anywherepeople walked, congregated, sat, or talked. I watched children play gamesthrowing tightly folded zhezhi squares to the ground trying to flip theiropponent’s pieces into the air. These objects and practice come from a Chinesefolk tradition with direct links to the ancient past. In the last couple ofyears I have found less and less zhezhi, at least in Beijing, and now dailywatch people gazing into their smartphones playing computer games and watchingmovies isolated from their friends and the world around them. Chen’s traditional materials and methods might lead one tomisinterpret her narrative as simply abstract or decorative. But if you observeChen’s earlier works, and make a connection to her themes of displacement andloss in rural China, these porcelain zhezhi could easily remind us of the1000’s of forgotten who are pushed aside in the name of “progress” and the goodof society. Or they could just be the shards of personal memory housed in disposablepaper containers and lost in the heap of time and uniformity. Her work viewstwo distinct worlds that are growing dangerously apart. These humble formshuddled together on the floor like new fallen snow cover a multitude of wrongsand point the way to a better day; the common and transient now rendered whiteand pure, forever. Also included in the exhibition are small figures made of ‘papiermache.’ They are insignificant in stature but powerful in scope. Terrifying,humorous, breathtaking, they are amazing portraits of the soul and body ofmankind. Ancient and disfigured they sit with feet dangling in the air peeringout over the white geometric field pondering their plight and history, aspeople in Chen’s hometown did as they sat and watched their homes beingdismantled then drowned in water, or crushed by natural disasters. Their driedand broken bodies are in a frozen state of decay but their spirits, likechildren, are resilient and ever young. (Text/ James Elaine)
