Luan Jiaqi is a student who needs a good environment, where there is no profit-oriented survival pressure, but she can sustain academic pressure and creative pressure, she is not afraid of competition but expects an ideal unrestricted condition so that she can release herself from her heart like a pure child. Although the current living condition is not perfect, it can still offer the young artists an atmosphere, such “care” is undoubtedly very important for the cultivation of young people’s dedicated research and experimental spirit.

For modern young artists, form is content and content can also be a natural aesthetic proposition, the naive personality even rejects the adults’ narrative and she provides an interesting possibility and imagination with the bold action of artistic arrogance, even though we are not ready to initiatively accept it, we still look forward to a new surprise again!

–The congratulatory speech by Luan Jiaqi’s tutor Zhan Wang

I attended Prof. Zhan Wang’s class when I was still an undergraduate, and the 1-month creative course has opened a new understanding of art for me. And I was determined to become a graduate of Prof. Zhan from then on, it’s very fortunate that I eventually achieved it.

In addition to being a renowned domestic and foreign artist, Prof. Zhan is also a teacher that earnestly and rigorously teaches with a set of effective teaching approaches. On the one hand, depending on his or her own idea, Prof. Zhan gives assistance to each student to promote the finishing of their work, on the other hand, he has always required the student to position themselves as “professional artists”, and attaches great importance to self-expression, the elaboration of work and the ability for each student to think logically. In the past, we often discussed more than 30 programs within each class, the intensity was big. But it also gave me a firm creative belief, rather than being indecisive, I boldly finished my ideas. It is fortunate that I learned from Prof. Zhan over the past few years, and sincerely thanks to his teaching and guidance, which have helped me to understand myself, becoming more leisurely and confident when I face creations in the future.

–Luan Jiaqi

How to start the creative thinking all the time? When Luan Jiaqi opened her computer, she first showcased the portrait of a female body which was finished during the undergraduate sketching course. She introduced: “This girl was in her early twenties and it was the first time for her to be a nude model, perhaps because she was nervous, suddenly tears rolled down her face and landed on the ground.” The sensitive character of Luan Jiaqi was deeply stung by the scene as the tears made the human body very beautiful and viable. Tears are generally regarded as an extremely feminine form of catharsis, but they reveal an emotional appeal that is not actually understood by anyone except by themselves so it looks as if the natural emotional resonance between women, and Luan Jiaqi was inspired to create the “Tears” series during the undergraduate period by this scene.

In Luan Jiaqi’s opinion, CAFA’s students generally have a strong modeling skill, while they have the ability to efficiently use a variety of media such as wood carving, stone carving, metal and ceramic creation through the study on the material course. But what can be called the “you” in the end? What is the most personal language? It made Luan Jiaqi confused, so that, she truly felt life and emotion, while through the daily curriculum of the Sculpture Department and the exchange program with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2009, she constantly tried and groped for the creation themed on “tears”. “Self-Status with Tears”, “Tears”, “Mommy, I’m Scared”, “The Sink with Tears”, the use of a realistic method to shape the characters with a variety of facial expressions, while these faces are full of numbness and calmness.

In the undergraduate graduation work “Tears” (2010), when the spectator is close to the sculptural masks, the sensing device will automatically start the water circulation system so that the sculptures cry. Some people think these masks are supernatural, while some people feel they are beautiful, as if telling people something, but it is “speechless” in fact. Luan Jiaqi frankly said that, the graduation creation has great relevance to her emotional problem that occured at that time, when emotional depression descends, tears are the only way of salvation. “Tears are often just like their superficial appearance: a drop of clear salty water mysteriously appears. A tear is like a drop of mercury, which instantly disappears, while it is also visible evidence.”

However, when the emotional problem disappeared, after graduation Luan Jiaqi was once again caught in confusion and trepidation. On the one hand, after graduation she could begin to freely create, but the unfamiliar social environment and the accompanying survival pressure made her lose direction. Faced with a variety of confusion, Luan Jiaqi created “Mommy, I’m Scared” (cast in copper, 2011), to interpret the helplessness and sorrow of adults who are in the face of pressure. Then the last piece of the “Tears” series of sculptures “The Sink with Tears” (installation, 2011) was finished. She said that, “I don’t want to simply rely on feeling and hormones as inspiration to create. When all the feelings that I want to express are drained, I don’t want to ‘painlessly moan’.”

In the theory and practice of contemporary art, the “body” itself is one of the sources of artistic creation, and artists continuously use broken, irrational bodiesto reveal the thought of human nature and life. After the end of the creation of “Tears” series, Luan Jiaqi began to be obsessed with the feelings and analysis of her body.

During the period of 2011 and 2012, Luan Jiaqi began the creation of a series of body-related works. Among them, in the “Attachment” (high temperature ceramics, 2011), Luan Jiaqi chooses her own breasts as the theme, combined with the shape of a teapot. She believes that the breast is the first object of love, both including functions of lactation and sexuality, but for people, rather than being related to sex, the breast is a dependency of love. “Lip-Language” (ceramics, 2011), the use of ceramics to reverse moulds of her own lips that have a variety of shapes, more than one hundred mouths seem silent, but theyhave something to say. The “Breasts with Thorns” (inverted ceramic mould breast, rose thorns, 2012), Luan Jiaqi reproduced her breasts with the use of rose thorns to decorate them, which makes the rose thorns seemingly grow out of breasts, and it also makes the original soft and fragile body organs become very hard and dangerous.

In the above works, Luan Jiaqi was still a female artist restricted in the sensitivity of body organs, and then she made changes in her works, including the performance work “On the Verge of Breaking Out” (performance recording, 2012): taking her nipple and touch screen mobile phone as materials, the use of her nipple to touch a phone screen to edit a message which reads “I am creating” and then a group sent it to all the people in her address book. “Playing Chinese Zither” (performance video, 2012): the use of the collision and friction between stringed instruments and branches of jujube to play musical instruments which is a unique idea. Luan Jiaqi began to gradually try to use the “body in action” to express her ideas and thinking. Luan Jiaqi said that: “What is art? What is not art? “I think it itself is an extension of the self-perception.”

Compared to the traditional “monumental” sculptural language, the extension of contemporary sculpture is expanding. On the one hand, the awareness and use of spatial media material tends to be diversified. On the other hand, the creation of contemporary sculpture is increasingly integrated with installation, ready-made, and even “multimedia”, “performance” and so on. And a variety of experiments have also extended the three-dimensional display of sculptures to acomprehensive exhibition experience which is similar to a “theater-effective”.

After the finishing of “Tears”, “Body” and the related works, Luan Jiaqi started facing a new creative bottleneck during the postgraduate period. Luan Jiaqi recalled that: One day, when she was cudgeling her brain to finish the homework of Zhan Wang’s course “Material and the Self Relationship”, suddenly felt like a running stereo on the side emitting the sound waves of “po”, so that, she placed a white paper on the stereo, and dropped ink droplets on the paper. The musical acoustic waves drove paper and ink to form a random image, which makes Luan Jiaqi felt very excited once again.

Music, vibration, splashing, performance, performing… Luan Jiaqi changed the occasionally received inspiration to a new series of work “Acoustic Painting”(acoustic painting installation, from 2012 to today). For the work, Luan Jiaqi elaborates that the work “Acoustic Painting” fixes the canvas on the specially designed loud speaker, through the physical acoustic vibration, together with my understanding of sound to feel color. When I have an idea in mind, I choose some liquid pigments and pour them on the canvas, the use of acoustic vibrations to make the pigments on the canvas are shaken and splashed by the form of radial blasting. But I am interested in the moving process rather than the results. When I see the liquid pigments moving together with unpredictable waves at different frequencies, I want to keep the wonderful moment that is felt at the beginning.

Speaking of the graduate graduation work “528Hz” (sculpture, acousticinstallation, 2016), Luan Jiaqi said it had evolved on the basis of “Acoustic Painting”. Through the study of the shape of each acoustic wave, she finally chose the 528Hz, which was one of the 6 core frequencies of the ancient universe. Meanwhile 528Hz is also seen as a frequency of love, genetic biologists have found that 528Hz frequency can repair a damaged DNA. These sounds can stimulate the brain’s physical system to keep it active and young, so that the damaged DNA will be gradually healed, and people can better absorb the energy of the universe. Through the acoustic vibration device it plays the528Hz frequency, the liquid surface presents a beautiful “Chladni’s figure”, and Luan even finds the shape of the sound of love is similar with the marshalingorder of natural sunflower faceplates, and the natural marshaling order is in line with the famous Fibonacci sequence. Therefore, Luan Jiaqi condenses the moment formed by the 528Hz wave to the sculpture, changing the sound of loveto the visible and touchable sculpture.

Meanwhile, through the studies of vibration form, Luan Jiaqi also places an acoustic explosive device that sends out a sound similar to a water tank in the 528Hz series of works, through the vibration blasting of the atomic bomb explosive voice shaking the nanoscale metal powders to simulate a virtual explosion. When the intensity of sound and the component of powders reach a specific value, a mini mushroom cloud will be formed in the installation box, and this vibration intensity will also allow spectators to reflect on destruction and fear.

About art and future, Luan Jiaqi also has her own feelings and expectations. As she writes in the statement which reads: “I once doubted my art. My tutor Prof. Zhan Wang once asked me what art I preferred to make? I replied that: the use of the simple state to make art is like a child playing. Perhaps the answer is not very academic, but it is the sound of my heart. I don’t care what kind of artist I am classified as, my works are not only my self-expression, and also about humans, I only hope that people are brought into my world, which makes the insight of their own world become evoked. I hope that my creation goes to an unknown state.”

Photo and partial work elaborations courtesy of Luan Jiaqi

Text by Yu Ya, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO