WITH THE SKY ON ONE SIDE, THE SINGING ON THE OTHER.

SHEN Qilan
Critic, curator and scholar

It is a spectacular era: we are visually bombarded everyday till our senses are almost numbed. It is also an accelerating era: we are involuntarily involved in various trends, chasing around restlessly on different tracks. Mianhua is a wonderful ballad in this era in favor of grand narratives. It is not advancing bravely, neither fashionable, nor hyperactive, and without any manifesto or ambition. Yet it is irresistibly fascinating: viewers cannot help stopping and listening to her whispering and singing.

Mianhua and her artwork exist as an integral whole. She relies on intuition, talent and self-learning in developing her own visual language and creating her own world on the canvas.

Quoting any art theory to analyze Mianhua’s art works seems to lose effectiveness. Those games and fun that contemporary art has all dwell in conceptual art, have nothing to do with her practice. She never cares or ingratiates herself with the attention economy pertaining to art.

It is very dangerous to expose the nerves in the air. But she is so loyal to the canvas with believer-like piety. Her pride and clumsiness, deep affection and selflessness, are presented unreserved in her art works.

Mianhua’s creation does not pursue logic or rationality as the first principle, while tempestuous emotions shape the driving force of her practice on the canvas. Art creation based on emotions is actually regarded as a dangerous thing for artists. It is like burning one’s life. How much fuel is available for its consumption? However, Mianhua does not seem to care about this kind of wear and tear. She decides without the least hesitation to crystallize the rushing emotions of life into her works, although it may be an untimely sincerity.

She said: “I have awe for all visible and invisible substances in the universe. All kinds of living things are born poetic and divine. Every true and everlasting love as well as beauty imply sorrows. My work always revolves around the grandeur and subtlety of life itself and everything it entails. It remained unchanged before and won’t deviate now or in the future.” It’s the magnificent beauty of heaven and earth, the fate and the vital decisions in ancient Greek drama, the mysterious gravity between stars and the irresistible magic of life that are resonating with her.

The world and times are accelerating their movements, and life speeds up like clothes plunged in a washing machine. Everyone spares no effort to race against time so that they won’t be taken out of the original life track. Mianhua is an existence that overrun this acceleration mechanism. Many of her works clearly resist the terrestrial gravity, that is set free from the acceleration and grows quietly in outer space. Her life and creation ground on her own speed, interest, intuition and instinct. She sings with a deep affection for life in various ways, which is extraordinary in an era when our souls can rarely keep up with the pace. Mianhua creates a rhythm of her own and it is priceless in our time.

Mianhua reminds me of some other female artists who have their own rhythm and cannot be generalized.

The famous American female artist Georgia O’keeffe quietly painted flowers, ox bones and the secrets of the universe on the edge of the desert; the outstanding French artist of “Art Naïve” Séraphine Louis has a talent for drawing flowers and leaves, each of which reflects the passion of life; the female artist from the Nordic Sweden Hilma Af Klint, who has just been dug up recently, saying that she was painting for the audience of 100 years later. No one can understand her painting 100 years ago, but today she is exhibited in the best art museum…

In the works of these female artists we perceive the silence and enthusiasm of a plant, as written in the poem by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:
“I know what a leaf, petal, kernel, cone and stem are,
and I know what happens to you in April and December. “
They are believers in nature and life.

Female artists’ intuition and expression with respect to earth may be able to avert from the turmoil of the times. Out of survival strategies, males are always caught in the current of times, whether they are resisting or submissive, whether they feel just like a fish in water or struggle against wind and waves. What this epoch needs is a wrinkle-removing hydrating Meso-gun to eliminate the traces of the time gone by. However, Mianhua is sincerely embracing the wrinkles, which are considered as a gift of time. Life with wrinkles and singing is truly amiable. In this era of great acceleration, Mianhua’s works embody time that overflows, depicting another kind of reality that our life may reach. It is full of implicated mystery and surprise.

Among all the creations of contemporary art, it is easy to identify some “smart works.” But Mianhua’s works never fall into this category. In her work, she does not hide her inferiority and pride, as well as her clumsiness and concentration.What she entrusts to the canvas and the audience is her complete and truthful self. This kind of non-tactical attitude renders her works evocative. For Mianhua, being an artist is not a profession, what really counts is the faith itself.

I remember once talking to her about the rules of the world and the pursuit of life. She smiled and said:

“Maybe, I am a wild flower indeed.”

She named herself Mianhua which is the Chinese equivalent for “cotton”. Grown as a crop, cotton is not good looking, nor fragrant, when it blooms. But it is real and contains the memory of the field.

Besides painting, Mianhua also writes poetry. Let me use the words of Wislawa Szymborska to echo the painting of Mianhua:

“In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.”

At this moment, tadpoles in the pond are flicking their tails, they’ve grown tiny legs to learn to swim; in the unmanned alley, roses are in full bloom; seagulls glide in the sky, passing between the clouds. A trace of wrinkles slides quietly round my and your eyes, and the songs passed down from generation to generation are gently sung on the prairie.

With the Sky on one side, the Singing on the other.

Shanghai, June 2019