The Many Lives of Ink and Paper: Reflections on Cindy Ng Sio Ieng’s Artistic Practice

Although ink painting on xuan paper has existed in China since the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), it was during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 A.D.) that the genre reached its height. The medium has since become a leitmotif of traditional Chinese art and a genre painstakingly explored and constantly referenced by many artists over the centuries. Because of its philosophical and aesthetic implications and despite the theoretical disputes that have animated Chinese cultural circles over the past few decades, Chinese ink painting (shuimohua) has always been revered and cherished, but seldom considered part of the contemporary art world, not simply because of the new iconographic references it has accumulated, but also because of its semantic implications. The discussion of ink on paper has often been limited to the formal realm, instead of embracing the conceptual one. Cindy (Born in Macau, lives and works in Beijing) has contributed a rich and varied body of work to the genre, widening and updating the dialogue about this medium. In a daring yet visually compelling way, she revives this respected mode of expression, bridging the gap between tradition and contemporaneity and between aesthetic and conceptual needs. By doing so, she has breathed new life into a medium that might otherwise be considered ossified or traditional.

 Cindy has been carrying out a silent revolution. She was educated in Macau, where she became familiar with etching, but she is artistically self-trained and nurtured by her travels around the world. A period of study in London in the early 1990s proved especially fruitful, as she was exposed to the wonderful ancient Chinese art collection at the study room of the British Museum. In her oeuvre, ink and paper are not simply eternal, sacred tools of tradition; they have become both the signifier and signified of the dialogue between the work, the artist, and the contemporary world she inhabits. In her hands, the classic black and white of ink on paper is complemented with a varied palette, including shades of gray, green, yellow, blue, and violet, delicately mixed in a subtle yet unexpected way to create abstract forms and landscapes of the mind, where filled and empty spaces produce a strong visual tension and a specific rhythm that dominates the composition. It is no chance occurrence that these mind-scapes are totally devoid of any human presence and show no relation to a process of pure mimesis. These forms flow from the beauty of the ink, which is not just a tool, but a real protagonist; ink’s specific yet variable texture, once placed on paper, (as the artist has been doing since the early 1990s), can convey a whole array of feelings, ranging from calm to uncertainty, from loneliness to contentment. Spontaneous changes in the ink seem to occur voluntarily on the chosen surfaces, but they are also controlled in such a subtle way that they perfectly echo the artist’s mental state. The viewer fully grasps the meditative mood of these pieces, which aim to evoke rather than represent. As a result, the viewer is invited to transform himself from peripheral onlooker to active participant by metaphorically stepping into these landscapes, getting lost within them, in order to redefine his own relationship with nature and the cosmos and come to a new appreciation of the ancient precept of supreme harmony, Tian Ren He Yi(the unity of man and nature). The artist’s simple, neat scenes may be a reaction to the cacophony of the outside world, becoming a refuge for the soul of both the artist and the viewer and offering visual and mental comfort.

 However, Cindy is far from surrendering to mere aestheticism; the various natural changes in the ink do not merely represent a safe aesthetic fascination; they also stand for a highly conceptual innovation. In her most daring pieces, the high and the low, the orthodox and the unorthodox, the natural and the artificial co-exist and influence one another, producing unexpected visual twists and turns that nevertheless create highly poetic and pensive compositions. The artist sometimes mixes ink with milk, coffee, and soy sauce and the effects of such unusual encounters are registered on various surfaces. The support chosen, whether xuan paper, canvas, photograph, or even video, is not a mere backdrop, but the active recipient of a dialogue between materials and media, the visual proof that the artist believes ink to be not a static value inherited from tradition, but a dynamic force able to open up new possibilities and unexpected routes.

                                                                                                                           Manuela Lietti Art critic and curator(Italy)