Bio

Holly Lee is originally from Hong Kong, China. She worked as a professional photographer from 1980 to 1995, during which she had participated in numerous group shows and held several solo exhibitions. She was awarded an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 1994 and was the recipient of the Grand Award and two Gold Awards from the Hong Kong Institute of Professional Photographers (1995) and Best of Multimedia in the Pan Pacific Digital Artistry Competition (1996). She was one of the founders and editors of Dislocation magazine, a Hong Kong-based monthly journal on contemporary photography, from 1992 to 1999. Holly Lee moved to Toronto at the end of 1997. Together with her partner Lee Ka-sing, they set up LEE Ka-sing gallery in 2000, which is considered one of the first galleries in North America to introduce contemporary Asian, especially Chinese, photography.

Interview

Huang Yan's impression on his residency at The Banff Centre.

The Banff Centre (Banff, AB) was a completely new experience for Huang. Even though he had been artist-in-resident in other countries, he was surprised to find this perfect "marriage" of art and business in Banff, especially in such a breath-taking, location known for its tourism. For a visual artist, the facilities are amazing, not only does the Banff Centre have studios for ceramics, printmaking, painting and drawing, papermaking, photography and sculpture; he also found music studios as well as facilities for interactive media. During his stay, he met a theatre director, a painter, a photographer and also a musician.

In the course of his ten days in Banff, Huang was productive and had produced one photographic work and some rubbings* around The Banff Centre. Using paper and ink, he went around the buildings and found parking signs, garbage bins, surfaces that were suitable to make rubbings. Later on he hung these rubbings in the studio which is located in a beautiful, secluded, wooded area on The Banff Centre campus. The studio is one among the eight Leighton Studios and was design by the Canadian architect Ron Thom.

Huang was interested in the idea of "Being a tourist here" and moved further to produce a self portrait at the Sulphur Mountain Summit. Standing in front of the Canadian Rockies he asked his wife Zhang TieMei, who was his class mate and has been his collaborator for many years, to work on a live Shan Shui painting on his face. It took about 40 minutes to finish the traditional Chinese painting and then they had to wait for the light to take subsequent photographs. Fortunately it was close to noon and the timing for photographs was perfect. They watched the clouds flow by, casting dramatic shadows on the mountains. The session took about an hour.

On The Grange Prize

It was important for Huang to be one of the 5 candidates of The Grange Prize. He is very positive about this project because, in China there was never such a prize in recognition of contemporary photographers. He found the Grange Prize idea, "1+1", that is Canada + one selected country, excellent. Comparing to an international call which will typically includes artists from 5 different countries, this 1+1 idea creates more focus thus resulting in more interaction. Both interaction and the complementary aspects are vital in the development of this art form.

When Huang was informed of being one of the candidates of The Grange Prize, he expressed his wish to go to the North to do his residency. By this "North" he meant places such as Yukon or the Northwest Territories. He wanted to interact with Canadian history and its first peoples. Huang still wants to do this and might come back to Canada sometime to realize his project. Huang befriended one aboriginal artist Alex Janvier when he was in Banff (Alex was there too for an art residency) and said he might go back to visit Alex, who is living and working in Cold Lake.

*From 1993 to 2002, Huang visited many cities in China and created rubbings of selected old architectures which were to be torn down.

About Huang Yan and his Works

Huang Yan, born 1966 in Jilin, a province located in the northeastern part of the China, was one of the earliest artists in China to explore social transformation in art practice from a sociological point of view.

His Family name Huang is the name of the first legendary king of all Han Chinese - Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor) who reigned from 2697 BC to 2598 BC. The character Yan, Huang's first name, composes of two parts - mountains and rocks.

Huang did his first Shan Shui (lit. "mountain-water") painting on body in 1994 as a self-portrait. To Huang, painting Shan Shui on the body is a tribute to Chinese traditional painting but on a "human canvas with unpredictable changes". By painting landscapes, flowers and birds and human figures of Chinese masters on naked bodies of men and women, the history of China is manifested, and marked on their very skins.

Huang emphasizes his art on fluidity (like the body landscape), and the change of forms induced by mixing different materials (like wrapping pig skin on rock). He is interested in the ways art is being received and read, and challenges one's preconceived viewing habit. A multidisciplinary artist, he works in sculpture, installation, performance and photography. He has been using photography in the last 10 years as his main form of expressions to create work.

Huang's work is very conceptual-based but roughly he follows his instinct in two opposite directions: analog and digital, traditional and revolutionary. The work is still seeking a way to bridge the gap.

Huang is very interested in the prospect that the digital era brings. He stresses in using the simplest methods in creating work. In some of his works, his digital imageries are basically downloaded from the Internet, which he later manipulated. In fact the Chinese are very much interested in the new communication and technology era in every aspect of their life. The younger generation, or the "brave-in-heart artists" seem to plunge into the technology full heartedly and without much regret.

From Huang's point of view, Hollywood has produced (or monopolized) a factory of role models of an idealized world, a movie and star-making system that conquered the world. Now the Internet has taken the lead. With the openness, individuals are able to choose and get what they want. They now can create with endless possibilities, from the boundless, countless collective wealth. Huang Yan is very drawn to the possibilities of the new modes of working and thinking and has been experimenting and creating towards that direction with some of the Shan Shui work.

Huang is greatly influenced by the woodcuts of Ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and 20th centuries. This can be felt especially in his recent photographs. Huang painted the four seasons on a woman's body and put her up on the trees. In a way, he is trying to find the balance between human and nature, the merging of fleshscape and landscape. The Buddhist idea, his other source of influence, puts his soul at peace; and landscape is an abode in which his mortal body can reside. In another series he photographed a painted woman running naked on The Great Wall. He muses on history, on all the wars that had been fought there. The woman acted as a soldier running towards the signal tower to warn garrisons of enemy advances. He also relates to the present - the speed and the marathon and the woman running as a bearer of the 2008 Olympic torch.

Links

Holly Lee is co-founder of the LEE Ka-Sing gallery in Toronto, Canada
www.leekasing.ca

Huang Yan is the co-founder of the Must Be Contemporary Art Centre in Beijing, China
http://mustbeartcenter.com/Arti_workh2.htm