Dai paper, Qiang embroidery, gold thread,
Gold foil, velvet flowers, ancient buildings
…
These beautiful works of craftsmanship,
Combining tradition and fashion,
Under her hands a new artistic life emerged.
She is the installation artist Wang Jue .
I went to live in the United States when I was ten years old.
Graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley,
Returned to China in 2009.
Transformed from an architectural designer to an installation artist,
Wang Jue is increasingly interested in traditional handicrafts.
In a charity event,
She met Teacher Zhao Shuxian, the intangible inheritor of velvet flower making skills .
And was attracted by his velvet flower skills.
As a cross-border designer,
What Wang Jue brings is new thinking and new concepts.
Every collaboration between her and Teacher Zhao,
It’s all a heart-to-heart communication about art.
It completely breaks away from the fixed modes of traditional concepts, expression forms and colors.
And constantly investigate new traditional Chinese crafts.
Wang Jue’s daughter is also keen on creation and likes handicrafts.
But Wang Jue doesn’t want her daughter to receive only Western education.
I hope she can find her roots in traditional Eastern culture.
And she also uses her actions to subtly cultivate her daughter’s interests and hobbies.
Dai Paper
In 2006, it was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists .
In Manzhao, Yunnan, this 1,300-year-old Dai village is the birthplace of the ancient craft of Dai paper. Local villagers make a living by making Dai paper, which has been passed down from generation to generation for more than 800 years.
This time, Wang Jue took his daughter to explore the ancient craft of Dai paper in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan. In Manzhao, there is Yankan, an inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage Dai paper , and his grandson Yanwenkan has also been influenced by it since childhood.
Dai people’s handmade bark papermaking
The Dai people’s hand-made bark papermaking technology is relatively complicated compared to modern papermaking technology.
It includes the five-step process of “soaking, cooking, pulping, pouring paper, and drying paper”, as well as collecting, drying, soaking, mixing ash, cooking, washing, pulping, pouring paper, drying paper, calendering, and peeling off paper Eleven procedures.
Dai paper has good toughness and does not harbor insects. It was often used to make scriptures in the past. This is related to the bark of the paper mulberry tree used to make Dai paper . Planting paper mulberry without cutting down trees, using only renewable leaves and making paper in a non-polluting way, and asking for restraint from nature, is the Dai people’s commitment to continuing their culture and their original intention to be full of reverence for nature . For the Dai people, Dai paper symbolizes a kind of faith.
Wang Jue’s daughter learned how to make paper from trees in kindergarten, but only from books. This time she went to experience how to make flower paper. To learn, to see, to understand, to integrate, this may be the gift Wang Jue wants to give his daughter.
Inspired by Dai paper, Wang Jue immediately started designing her installation “Cloud House” after returning to Shanghai.
The Dai paper hanging in mid-air is like clouds floating in the sky, full of a sense of purity. The purer, the cleaner. Wang Jue also hopes that after people in the city see ” Cloud House” , their whole body and mind will return to a peaceful state .
With awe of traditional culture and expectations for a better life, Wang Jue injects tradition and fashion, experience and emotion into her works. As for the expression and inheritance of art, Hunan Satellite TV’s “Freshly Made” series tonight at 23:55 In the second episode “Inherited Light and Shadow” , Wang Jue will interpret it for you in her own way!
