Artist integrates ancient Chinese art forms into multimedia landscape installation
Jennifer Wen Ma, an artist working in multiple media, is showcasing a sculptural landscape installation at MGM Cotai, continuing to follow her roots in Chinese ink drawing while at the same time paying tribute to contemporary art.
The artist’s honeycomb-structured paper sculptures, which utilize laser-cutting techniques to mimic ancient Chinese accordion folds, form a handscroll-like painting under the roof of the MGM Cotai’s Spectacle.
Titled “A Landscape of Metamorphosis: No End to End,” the installation took inspiration from traditional art forms, philosophies, aesthetic theories, and practices, such as Literati landscape painting, classical garden design, and the Book of Rites.
Wen combined these inspirations using cutting edge technologies, which invite audiences to immerse into and be part of the art work.
Speaking to the press the interdisciplinary visual artist based in both Beijing and New York admitted that working in the Spectacle is a challenging task given that it is a public space rather than an art gallery.
“I thought it was really great challenge to rethink how to use space, and how to use paper, my primary material right now, as an installation,” Wen said.
“[The space] is not museum, it is not a gallery, so people come here not to look for art and that’s a reality. I want to acknowledge that, I want to meet them where they are,” Wen added.
In her installation, “Change” is the core message of the work – in that it offers a different look and feel when viewed from different perspectives, times and audiences.
The artist depicts the theme with two sets of paper sculptures, themed “Spring and Summer” and “Autumn and Winter”, which alters season by season.
The “Spring and Summer” set represents the revival of liveliness with hints of tender greens, pinks and reds; while the “Autumn and Winter” set coats the atrium with darker hues with sparkles of silver to mimic the calm, snowy hills during the colder days.
The sculptural garden is in a form of three islands, inspired by Macau’s topography, and has been created as a site-specific work that integrates seamlessly into the public space of the Spectacle.
The three islands together create a scene reminiscent of a landscape painting that extends wide-open to invite audiences in ambience of a classic Lingnan style garden.
Beside these installations are what Wen calls “visual ponds,” embedded with LED panels as bases, reflecting colored beams that change with the natural conditions.
On top of the sculpture garden a single feature activates the space. “Out of this landscape are three butterflies that soar out of the landscape into the sky,” Wen explained.
“That’s the metamorphosis combined into the whole installation,” she said.
