Artist Statement
Miao Xiaochun
I really don't know where I came from, or where I will go, but I do know that many substances go in and out of my body each day, among which is water (H2O). Before entering my body, water would have gone through numerous living things – plants, animals, and other human beings. And it will again pass through many plants, animals and human beings after leaving my body. I am merely one of many containers that temporarily holds it or one of the points through which it passes. Water has long been recycled through the oceans, the sky, and land. This process begun ages ago, it continues to the present, and will continue into the future, never stopping but forever and endlessly repeating.
Does water carry and delivery certain information about the source and destination of life? Are all life forms and water vitally related? Do they thus show compassion and concern for each other? Is this constantly changing life, so delicate and subtle, endlessly recycling itself as water does? Will life that has vanished condense itself in some other place and return to earth just as evaporated water becomes rain, snow of frost?
When compared to the history of life form, the history of art is much too short to be worth mentioning. However, when compared to an individual’s life, art history then seems fairly long. Selecting from the long, as well as short history of art, several water-related artworks that have touched me, I have tried to depict the grand inter-linkages of life played by water through the latest digital technology. The thousands of characters in these works have been replaced by three-dimensional models of my own image created on a computer. This represents a kind of “metabolism” just like the water that is flowing through my body. In this way, I have “flowed” into the art of different lives and different times, and have “generated” new artwork that have flesh and blood relationships with the originals.