World renowned ink artist Yaun Jinhua talks about his 16-year-long Embraces series and exploring the NFT world

Q1: What was your creative path of the ‘Embraces’ series?

A1: ‘Embraces’ series was started in 2005. I finished the first collection in 2008 which was exhibited in public organizations in Washington, D.C. in 2009 and collected by the Library of Congress and other institutions. Then, around 2013, I started my art residency at Swatch Art Peace in Shanghai. During that period of time, I explored a large number of different art forms which helped me to further develop the ‘Embraces’ series, and I have completed a new collection of more than 100 pieces. This part of the work is based on small round paper and silk painting, which is what we call sketch. At the same time, I also tried the same ‘huggie’ figure into sculpture, porcelain, and animation works, which were exhibited in Shanghai. I always think there is still potential space for exploration in this series, so from then on, I have made more attempts in schemas and images, and formed my current works in the third stage.

A2: The spiritual connotation of traditional Chinese landscape painting, in my understanding, contains a state of reflecting the human heart with heaven and earth. At the beginning of my ‘Embraces’ series, I wanted to connect people and nature more intuitively. According to Taoism, the world is a big universe, and the human body is a small universe. I always believe that there is a connection between the two. Therefore, embracing represents the spiritual connotation and value orientation of “unity of man and nature”, appreciating seclusion and the true meaning of the scenery with a clear mental state. The way people behave with each other echoes with mountains and rivers. I hope this part of the work is full of warmth, closeness, trust, dependence, mutual assistance, and positive attitude. In this context, the landscape should be a symbol of a purified spiritual world. In the continuous experiments of ‘Embraces’ series, I found that the harmony between man and nature and between man and man is the ideal direction I want to pursue, however, conflicts always exist in this world. I wanted to interpret this schema in many ways, so the following series of works came into being. The thing I always tend to express is not a pessimistic attitude that people are essentially lonely, but a state in which people are essentially trying to resist loneliness, a state in which positivity is mixed all the time.

A3: Those works were created by chance. It took me about half a year establishing this expression. During my art residency at Swatch Art Peace, I learned from a large number of works in various forms, such as photography, graffiti, new media, etc. I felt that my work needed a more dimensional way of explaining concepts. After trying some mediums such as sculpture, installation, porcelain and so on, I think there are still some shortcomings — the strength of the work brought by those mediums is relatively weak, and they are unable to express the concept of combining contradiction and unity. So, I chose to make the picture move. This is actually a bold attempt, because it is completely different from the artistic philosophy of traditional Chinese ink painting. It is no longer implicit but transformed into a more straightforward direction. However, I am not willing to give up traditional Chinese ink painting, so I decide not to make animation as my purpose of artistic creation. What I would like to do is to pick a few out of about a hundred pieces and moved on to the animation stage. I also spent a lot of energy on how to animate: I don’t want the work to be like a common animation style since normal style is not suitable for the Chinese classical ink painting. I hope the animation can still let people find out the hand-painted traces which comes out those playful but simple figures in a digital work with a hand-painted texture.

A4: This may be a new phase in history of art, or, to put it conservatively, the harbinger of a new phase. It is well known that there were several major stages in the development of art: the era of Renaissance technique, the era of the luminescence of masters like Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet, and the era of Duchamp with his ‘Fountain’. In these stages, there are many things that have changed, and the generalization of art category is undoubtedly a very important point. This is where I identify with NFT. It guides artists to create with an attitude that belongs to or to some extent is ahead of the times. I’m just an artist, and I don’t know much about blockchain or crypto, but from my perspective, NFT can operate smoothly on the basis of normalizing the ‘uniqueness’ and ‘value’ of artworks, which is undoubtedly in line with my attitude towards art — originality, exploration, and spiritual value. As an artist, I think NFT provides a special kind of guarantee. I always say that art should not be controlled by money, and here’s the point: first of all, I want artists to be free from pressure to create. An artist like Van Gogh should be able to make a living. Secondly, artists cannot just create arts for profit. We should always be in a state of creative exploration for more advanced, unknown ideas, rather than succumbing to the market, being dedicated to think about ‘how can I sell my paintings more expensive’. From this point, I think NFT is a platform that can provide a kind of assurance. It ensures that artists are not bound by art forms: many art forms are not well recognized and accepted by the public, such as performance art, graffiti, etc. There is always a burden in the mind of the artist when he creates this kind of work. For example, when I was preparing to create this animated ‘Embraces’ series, I had already made the psychological preparation that I would only exhibit them in some way instead of selling them. However, this will undoubtedly affect the enthusiasm of artists to create more or less subconsciously. NFT provides a more relaxing and free creative community. Second, NFT has high tolerance with fantasies. There are a lot of works that have not been truly understood by the public during this time, but that doesn’t stop them from circulating on the chain. The preservation ability of the chain, allowing those works to wait until they are understood one day in the near future, which is fortunate for contemporary artists for sure.