Jing Yuan Huang Transmigrating Inadequacy
Transmigrating Inadequacy (St. John’s, NL), Jing Yuan Huang, 2009 © J. Haney
Opening on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 5 pm
Commented visit with the artist on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 4 pm
In OBORO's large exhibition space, Jing Yuan Huang reinvents Transmigrating Inadequacy, a site-specific installation of large-scale images created from assembled photocopies. By reshaping the gallery's material boundaries, the artist invites the viewer to wander deep within the work where a mythological space inspired by the notion of Tibetan transmigration develops. Huang proposes a metaphorical exploration of the transformations exerted by cultural displacements and the failures and challenges they generate.
According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead (the Bardo Thodol), transmigration is a series of after-death ebb and flow stages, a journey whose finality determines the next reincarnation. Wavering between fragility and strength, loss and gain, this passage is much like immigration, a mirror of the path freely chosen by the artist when she put down roots in North America.
Drawing itself, the crux of this body of work, is also offered to the viewer's gaze as the result of a series of transformations – from photogram to photocopy, grid, and ultimately, installation. An aesthetic of interchange and erosion emerges from images that have transited through many media. The fragility and immensity of the final rendering is fascinating, an invitation to slip into this migrating interlude.
Transmigrating Inadequacy (St. John’s, NL), Jing Yuan Huang, 2009 © J. Haney
Jing Yuan Huang was born and raised in the southeast of mainland China and immigrated to Canada in 2001. She received a BFA with Distinction from Concordia University in 2005 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Major projects include a series of mixed-media paintings, first shown in 2006, entitled Anachronism as well as Transmigrating Inadequacy, a site-specific installation constantly in progress. Transmigrating has been exhibited, in the United-States, China, Germany and across Canada.
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011
Glissement transmigratoire (Transmigrating Inadequacy). Jing Yuan Huang – Photo Paul Litherland, 2011