NARRATOR:
Artist Duan Jianyu painted a roast chicken against the natural landscape of Guilin, China. Inserting something like that into a typical Chinese landscape painting may look as absurd as it sounds, but chickens have been a recurring subject in Duan’s paintings since 2003. Here, she explains why.
DUAN JIANYU:
People’s lives have changed a great deal since 2000. These changes are all-encompassing, reflected as much in the global economy as in our everyday lives.
I think this work, Art Chicken, can be understood on various levels. First of all, chicken is a typical food that we Cantonese people eat. It corresponds to life’s mundane and trivial nature. Secondly, the word ‘chicken’ is a Cantonese euphemism for sex workers. You know, there was a time in the art scene when, after more than a decade of flourishing development in Chinese contemporary art, artists were getting more and more obsessed with every exhibition opportunity and the chance to be rich and famous.
To me, chickens are rulebreakers. They basically just like to spend their days running around. In a way, that reflects my mind. There’s a part of me that refuses to conform, likes messing around and tries to break the air of elegance that everybody is trying to maintain.
Layering a chicken with something as mundane as Guilin’s landscape has generated a kind of image that no one has ever seen before. This encourages the imagination of the viewer to run wild. With this painting, I wanted to create a dream-like state with a tone of absurdity.
