PRESENTER:
We asked M+ conservator Jofan Huang about this beautiful triptych by fellow conservator turned artist Yuan Jai, and how it merges the traditional with the modern.
JOFAN HUANG:
It's a very colourful work and the style of the mounting and the execution of painting is based on traditional techniques, and it draws a lot of references from the traditional format. But, it looks different, you know, you have every element and motif has a twist. She is using the traditional Chinese material, but it's more, it's more about her choice of colour, her choice of composition, and her choice of design that sets it apart.
PRESENTER:
Jofan was able to learn more from the artist about how her choice of traditional materials—pigments and silk—allowed her to create a piece that’s actually rather modern in its vibrancy.
JOFAN HUANG:
She used both vegetable pigment and the mineral pigment, and the way she uses it, it has a sequence. She uses the wash, the vegetable wash first, and then she lays on top of it mineral pigment. So, you can kind of see there’s a bit of a layering, even though it’s very subtle, it kind of answers my question of like, why do you pick one material over the other? And she immediately said that she was inspired by a traditional painting that she saw before. And then since the 1990s, she decided to paint on silk because it allows her to build a more vibrant, more colourful image that she would like to present.
PRESENTER:
Although her aesthetic style may set this piece apart from more traditional scroll paintings, Yuan Jai’s choice of subject matter will be undeniably familiar to audiences.
JOFAN HUANG:
If you're from Hong Kong or this culture, you immediately associate peach with birthday, you know, and in the bottom, the bottom right of the centre panel, you see a bamboo that's been obscured into a shape of Chinese character shou and that means ‘age’, and then it has like pine tree, or it also means like auspicious, like it really just kind of jumping all at you like, I’m, I’m about birthday!
PRESENTER:
Despite being a conservator with an impressive eye for detail, Jofan told us how her favourite moment of working with any artwork, is often the very first.
JOFAN HUANG:
You're not looking at it as a painting, you're not looking at it as a cultural object, or looking at it like something's damaged, you know. You're just looking at it for what it is and trying to figure it out, ‘what am I looking at?’ That kind of query, that curiosity: I think that's a part that I always like when I approach any artwork—that freshness, that new feeling. I think, I always try to remember that, because that's the part that kind of excites you as a spectator, right?
