Ballet Landscape

More Information

These two works of art feature an interplay between different media: photography and landscape painting, as well as tattooing and body modification. These photographs tell a rich story about history and culture in China. China’s Cultural Revolution under the leadership of Mao Zedong led to stringent control of artistic expression, including the repression of photography. During the same period, calligraphy and traditional landscape painting were denounced as elitist. The brief explosion of photography as an artform in China in the 1990s and early 2000s, in which Huang Yan played an important role, is an important component of the history of photography in general. The artist’s exploration of traditional shan-shui literati ink and brush painting, executed on the nude female body, transforms this medium into a highly taboo subject. The cultural subversions at play in these compositions will doubtless be fascinating for our audiences to explore. Yan’s own words on the subject are illuminating: “Landscape is an abode in which my mortal body can reside, landscape is my rejection of worldly wrangling, landscape is a release for my Buddhist ideas.”