I’m interested in your shift from studying Architecture and moving into the world of Fine Arts – how did you come to this decision and what were the challenges? It was during the recession in 2011 following the Christchurch earthquake when I graduated from my masters in architecture. There were jobs but no architecture firm was interested in helping out young graduates. I suffered a year of unemployment, and then I came across the Wallace arts award. I entered for the first time and became a finalist. After a few years I ended up in a teaching job for arts and did a bit of lecturing for Otago polytechnic for construction management and quantity surveying. It was a fun experience but I was a free soul for too long. I had many students that missed me as I had the most innovative projects to teach, but I felt I had a calling for kids. I’m tired of hearing that Asian kids are only good enough to be doctors or lawyers, I felt like I had a role to play in New Zealand as the next top artist. As a public figure and an educator we have the opportunity to influence our younger generation with the correct values. As artists we are doctors to the heart and mind and are the earliest form of storytelling and entertainment. We imbue objects with love and this kind of love; cleanse the white modern walls with meaning.
You straddle two worlds; engaging with the contemporary art world, while embracing traditional Chinese painting techniques. How do you reconcile this as a Chinese New Zealand artist? I feel that being a Chinese descendant, and a student of the Lingnan School of arts, we as artists need to balance our values or our core to who we are. This is a part of my whakapapa, my roots so to speak. Using these techniques honours five generations of people before me that mastered and passed on their knowledge. But I see the future of Lingnan arts is at a turning point in time. People need a reform, a reform in using the techniques with a modern language. To tell a story without poems written on the side. Many Asian Kiwis can speak Chinese but can no longer read, I want to bridge this gap with my art. I want to paint things that don’t just look like decorations, and I want to answer bigger philosophical questions in life’s meanings.
Can you unpack the significance of motifs such as the heart, fish and flower and their relation to yourself and Chinese culture? The heart is significant in many cultures as the organ of love and thoughts. It’s the organ that breathes life to all things, it’s the most fragile of our organs and it’s hidden from our eyes. In old sayings, we talk about giving our heart away like an object, or having a heart of gold or being pure hearted. I see this as a mysterious symbol, an object or a framework that can tell stories.
The fish as a symbol of prosperity is due to the abundance of offspring and its fluid nature in movement. Fish can swim in a figure eight motion that is the number of luck and also the infinity sign. They are rich in colour and have been said to be the offspring of a dragon in ancient Chinese myths. They are also the hardest subjects I have ever come across in Chinese ink art, due to its round contours; it takes many years to develop a hand that can move fluidly in a vast array of angles. The brush strokes must be continuous without breaks and must not have any sharp straight edges. This took me ten years of continuous painting to master this.
I came across painting peonies in the USA. They are flowers with massive blooms and require a cold condition with ants to eat off the sugars on the petals to open the flower. I see them as a symbol of life, fighting off the cold and pests just to make a bloom that lasts only for 7 days. They explode like fireworks after putting on the greatest show for the end, like how I see life is short but if we like the peonies can bloom to our greatest potential then its worth living life even if its a short one. When I was in the states a bit of pollen got in my eye and I had the worst infection ever, my eyes ended up swelling up and I saw dots of colours on the edges of things. I thought this was the end of my painting career, and then it added layers of meaning in my works and how I now see the world. Full of sweet things and full of hope even when things don’t quite look right.
Most of the motifs in your work reference Chinese imagery rather than a New Zealand influence – is this a conscious decision? Yes, because being kiwi doesn’t make me an artist that needs to paint things for a souvenir shop. Vice versa, being a Chinese descendant doesn’t mean I copy landscapes from China, I usually make up my own… I call them dreamscapes, spaces for me to fill ideas. Only in certain situations I use New Zealand landscapes or plants to tell the story I need to tell about myself. In 2016 I did a painting about my lungs being filled up by the waters of Piha beach, a close call drowning for me when I was a kid.
From the outset you have been very successful in winning multiple awards and residencies, is this strategic? Yes as this is my way of advertising Chinese contemporary art to the NZ public and no because I have no idea what the judges would like. I only paint things that are meaningful to me and would only create works that I feel that would enlighten people to meanings in life.
You have titled this new series ‘Candy Crush’, can you tell me about the inspiration behind the ‘Sweet’ additions?
There are sweet things in life no matter how crushed things may seem. See life as entertainment, lining things up to score points. But in the end everything’s leads to one thing… Happiness. Let those colours be like hundreds and thousands of sprinkles. Let the sweetness stick to you and stay positive. Life like peonies are like fireworks, they bloom big but are short lived. Live life to its fullest. The strings of gold that drip and cross like threads of precious fate…. like people we meet and ones we love. Keep these connections in life; they would frame your life up with more than just fears and disappointment. Like glue these gold threads would harden up and hold you and your universe together.
