The China Project

111 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection CHEN Haiyan Chen Haiyan has worked with dream imagery since the early 1980s. She first began to record her dreams as sketches in private notebooks as a young art student. While studying at the Zhejiang Academy in Hangzhou (now the China Art Academy), Chen depicted the official subjects expected by her teachers and superiors. Describing this period, she comments: ‘I recorded my dreams as a form of self-expression. It was a private activity. At school I continued to depict the prescribed subjects in class and participated in organised national art exhibitions as was expected’. 1 Chen’s dream diary images, with their emphasis on self and individuality, were a radical act at the time and in stark contrast to her official graduation etchings of a local steelworks factory – which won Chen third prize in the ‘China National Young Artists’ Exhibition’ in 1985. On leaving the Academy, she began using the subjects in her diaries to create a series of woodblock prints. The 1980s ushered in a period of significant social and cultural change in China, and the government’s Open Door policy allowed the dissemination of previously restricted books, magazines and new artistic styles. Chen’s interest in dreams was fuelled by Western psychology and philosophy — she read books by Freud, Jung, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietszche — and also by a resurgence of interest in ancient Chinese mystical and philosophical traditions, including Buddhism, Daoism, shamanism, alchemy and metaphysics, all of which had significant theories on dreams. Much of this material had not been available since the 1950s, as it was considered bourgeois, superstitious, and ideologically suspect. 2 Stylistically, there are many influences on Chen’s work, including Japanese prints and German Expressionism, but her unique style also has strong resonance with China’s long tradition of woodblock-printing, including ‘Buddhist sutras, book illustration, New Year prints, medical and educational charts and 20th century revolutionary and propaganda prints’. 3 The symbolism and techniques of paper cutting have also been a fruitful source for her practice. Chen’s five works in this exhibition date from the late 1990s and early 2000s. They are all executed in black and white, with text and image taking equal place, as in Dream 9 January 1998 1998, in which the sky is entirely subsumed by calligraphic symbols. Chen herself appears in most of her images, identifiable through the use of parallel lines of long, straight hair, often depicted encountering animals (birds, fish, snakes and other archetypal dream symbols), and immersed in a landscape formed from text and the occasional identifiable object such as a bridge or road. Multiple times and dimensions are also frequently represented in a single image. To make her prints, Chen carves blocks of pear wood, drawing on a traditional Chinese printing technique known as touyin (penetrating printing). Carving is slow and laborious, which is belied by the prints’ sense of immediacy and spontaneity. These woodblock prints are at once absurdly humorous, magical and intensely private. They reveal Chen’s internal life with a freedom from constraint that is seductive, while drawing on her rich cultural heritage and varying influences. endnotes 1 Chen Haiyan, quoted in Claire Roberts, ‘Chen Haiyan, dream work’, Art Asia Pacific , no.36, October– December 2002, p.46. 2 Roberts, p.48. 3 Roberts, p.49. opposite Dream 9 January 1998 (Meng – Touliang de ye zi [Dream – Transparent leaves]) 1998 Woodblock print, ed. 6/30 / 42 x 42cm / Collection: Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection above Dream 26 October 2007 (Meng - Ningjing de yuan [Dream - Quiet courtyard]) 2007 Woodblock print, AP / 93 x 61cm / Collection: Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection