This series is born of my usual piecemeal experience and feelings, switching to the words, such as Quilt, Flower and Chinese landscape.
The development of quilt is almost synchronal with that of modern civilization of human being. In addition, in the modern human society, it’s difficult for people to live without quilt, the super-realistic item embodying human desire and applied value. At the beginning of Chinese reform and opening up, quilts were just like mirrors reflecting the numerous things of the society at that time. Life then was not as colorful and multiform as now. There were neither abstract implications nor “independent personalities”. People then didn’t have as much dissertations and preference on aesthetic appreciation as in the modern society, but more collective experience and consciousness. Imaginably, the material and the pattern of the quilts in that age were plain but unique, just as a portraiture of the desirability of people who were looking forward to a well-to-do society.
In that period, there were numerous quilts having flowers as their theme, which is probably relatively permanent content. Man and woman, old and young, happy and sad, most of them may have a feeling of it more or less. Because the flower indicates both strong implication of personality and collective awareness to us. Concerning landscape, it plays a profound role in Chinese history. We can tell its huge power and significance from the fact that it’s not only a simple word but also a spiritual symbol of the whole Chinese culture and art. Of all ages, people express their ambition and interest by painting and appreciating traditional landscape. Then can this powerful landscape be used to describe things today? So I am trying to recall and memorize the trace of life from these objects by using landscape, which is the most common and approachable way to express our emotion.
