Sixi Artist Talk
The New Birth of Traditional Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Women’s Identity
Conversation with Artist Yu Yu
Event Date
15 February 2025
14:30 - 16:30
Event Review
On 15 February, on the occasion of the closing of the exhibition ‘Lights Out’, Sixi Museum is honoured to invite participating artist Yu Yu to present an artist talk entitled ‘Breaking the Cocoon: The New Birth of Traditional Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Women’s Identity’. Taking her own artistic creation as a thread, the artist presents her thoughts on the contemporary transformation of traditional resources and the rebirth of aesthetics, starting from the historical background and gender experience of traditional Chinese painting.
Based on her prolonged experience of studying Chinese painting, Yu Yu firstly shares her reflections
and insights on the nomenclature of traditional Chinese art and the establishment of the formal aesthetics of literati painting. Similar to the ‘conceptual painting’ in contemporary art, literati painting emphasises more on the expression of human nature and implications in addition to skills, and stresses the expression of emotions through ink and brushstrokes, which is a way of outputting images for the literati class to complete the construction of the Taoist identity under the Confucian ideological system. However, the lack of women’s expression and emotion as objects made it difficult for contemporary female artists to find a place for self-foundation and empathy, which constitutes the source of inspiration for Yu Yu’s art.
In the Q&A with the audience, Yu Yu also talked about the healing power of art. Art creation itself is a process of emotional output and release, which is able to present the true state of the inner self, and when art is ultimately directed to the public to evoke a wider range of resonances and interactions, the connotation of the art work will be given a deeper meaning.