The Invitation to Happines

Product description

From a series of eight drawings ‘The Parallel Universe – Tale of Genji’ exploring the capabilities of free-hand drawing tracing the conscious activities. Inspired by Japanese classical novel The Tale of Genji (11th century). The drawing mingles the classical ancient figures and elements (Yamato-e handscroll painting) with my contemporary experience and reaction to the story.

In this ceramic ‘cake’ you are invited to look through the surface into the inner sphere. It is a free-hand carved ‘Stream of Consciousness’ across the form that creates an open narrative inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It is room of the artist and also the viewer to reflect on the significance of the interior space as a medium of independent individuality and thought.

Qi works primarily with hand-built and thrown high-fire (1220°C) white stoneware with free-hand carved and inlaid original designs. The illustrated works celebrate different carving techniques (Huahua technique in Chinese, or Mishima, and sgraffito) on ceramics and are decorated using decorative slips and underglazes.

Qi’s ceramics search for conversations and mutual encouragement between the object and her carved drawings, which are deeply inspired by Taoism and Phenomenology philosophy. The works are known for their quirky, playful and symbolic narrative representation of the transforming identity, human-nature interactions, feminism, and cultural boundaries.

Rather than following a well-planned blueprint, Qi free-hand carves the organic shapes she builds, allowing the shape of the clay and drawing determine the composition. Like a spreading vine, her expressive pictures find ways to shape the object, forming the outlines and content, vice versa, to capture the flow of consciousness, self-invented visual narratives and personal emotions. Instead of searching for uniformity and certainty, her ceramics call for a curiosity of the unknown, abnormal and asymmetrical.

Qi is also exhibiting several wall works - Ink Drawings and Watercolour / Collage works.