Academy Summer Residencies 2016: Beijing

Our final dispatch from Beijing is from Amina Kerimova MFA 2017. 

I’ve been lucky to have visited many places around the globe in my life. Asia happens to be one of my favorites. Compared to Hong Kong, where I once lived for a couple of months, it quickly became apparent how different and unique a city like Beijing truly was. Despite the fact that China is densely populated and one encounters a lot of noise, pollution, navigation troubles and other problems, I still fell in love with the country as my time there kept passing by. There was calmness and a homey feeling that had been absent in Hong Kong. 

When I was awarded the residency, I decided to distance myself from any preconceptions or assumptions about visiting a city like Beijing. I was just excited to work as an artist in a completely new city and open my life to an adventure. I've been advised by last year’s Chinese artists in residence not to make any plans for the prospective work that I was about to create, because plans tend to change in a context as different as Beijing. So I started my residency with an open mind filled with excitement for something new.

(Beijing landscapes)

 During my first week I tried to get to know the real Beijing - no tourist attractions, just get to know it from inside out and discover beauty in everything. The greyness of pollution can be depressing, but as an artist you can fall in love with greys. As a result, Beijing landscapes became animated in color to me. Having found my subject and inspiration I dove into work - I wanted to meet the expectations of the Academy that had given me this unique chance to be in Beijing. Plus, I could exhibit my art at a Beijing gallery!

               

(My first memory based landscapes, work in progress)

During my first year of school, I used to photograph unusual compositions that I found fascinating and create landscapes and cityscapes from them. The pieces were often visually abstract, but on closer inspection one would realize they've been crafted from real-life instead of imagination.  In China, I have decided not to use photographs but my memories and imagination whilst continuing to focus on landscape, architecture, space, sky and light. This was a new step for me and the approach definitely took more time. There was quite a number of times that I would sit in the studio for hours just staring at my work, ruminating about what to do next. My mind was clogged up with thousands of ideas of how to best project my impressions of the city.  

  (My Beijing inspired art)

I came up with the idea that you don’t need anything obvious to express your feelings and love for a place. All that’s needed is the right mood and the right colors on the canvas. That's why I chose to use Chinese spoons to express landscape. The “spoons” were gigantic - 2 x 3 meters! A work this big was an experiment in itself. Knowing that the art materials in Beijing are way cheaper than in NYC, I decided to buy beautiful heavy linen which costs $100 compared to $800 or even more in NYC. I knew for fact that I would never be able to finish the work in China or have the chance to transport the linen back to NYC without damage. But I decided I didn’t care and started my spoons anyway. I still remember how physically exhausting it was to paint such large scale! The day after I started I was so sore I couldn’t walk! 

  

                     

(Exploring Beijing)

CAFA (China Central Academy of Fine Arts) was undoubtedly a large and beautiful academy — a home to varieties of buildings and a museum. However, the building was under continuous construction during the summer, and as a consequence we had a huge fan blowing nothing but hot air in our studio, making it impossible to stay there.  Oh well, at least the paint dried faster! 

After the CAFA and New York Academy of Art exhibition in DAYUNTANG MUSEUM at the end of the month, we all had a huge dinner, at with which we reminisced about the month that we had spent in Beijing. The month of living and breathing and talking about art 24 hours a day was coming to an end.  I started to feel sad about it coming to a close.  Beijing was my muse, a perfect place for me to depict the juxtaposition of nature and manmade structures.  There is no doubt that residing in Beijing has influenced my artistic life immensely. Even though I have never completed any artist residency before, I know for sure this one will be unforgettable and incomparable to any future residencies I hope to accomplish. I will have an endless trove of memories from my trip to China. Asia will always be my source of inspiration and I am already looking forward to creating more China inspired art.  

                            

(last free days in Beijing)

My gratitude towards Academy for offering me the privilege to undertake this endeavor in endless. And of course to my sweet Academy friends - Tania, Isaac, Pedro and everyone I met in Beijing. Thank you so much for being so loving and supportive!  

Academy Summer Residencies 2016: Beijing

Our third dispatch from Beijing comes from Tania Alvarez MFA 2017

Beijing: the food, the cheap art supplies, the wonderfully talented studios mates, CAFA, the architecture - all combined made for the perfect residency. This was the first of what I hope to be many residency experiences and one that I think will be impossible to forget.  It was also the first time I had been to China or Asia for that matter. I instantly fell in love with the challenge of being in a country where communication was near to impossible except for the six key phrases I am especially proud of learning:

1.     Hello: Nihao

2.     Thank You!: Xièxiè

3.     You’re welcome, Bié kèqì

4.     How Much?: Duōshǎo qián

5.     The ultimate key for eating without tears,  Not Spicy:      Bù là

6.     Tea: Chá. 

(I apologize in advance to all of my Chinese speaking readers for my terrible spelling and/or anything that is incorrect. Please blame it on Google.)

This is about as far as I got with learning Chinese but let me tell you, there is nothing more rewarding than being able to order your own cup of tea or bottle of beer: Píjiǔ.  Isaac was the one person on the residency who we eventually found out has a crazy ability to memorize Chinese words and phrases. When he found a new word we were typically subjected to being his audience for a day as he would repeat it a million times until it stuck in his head. He officially became the residency's designated navigator and communicator. One of my favorite things was his version of saying thank you and it usually was “Xièxiè man”. It always gave us a good laugh.

When we first arrived in Beijing I was immediately drawn to the texture of the city walls and the layers of history that were left embedded into them. I also couldn't help but notice the grayness of the sky, which was typically a sign of poor air quality, but it created an amazing cutout of geometry that I couldn't stop photographing.  To my surprise, Beijing was not bursting in highly saturated color as I had imagined. It was completely de-saturated with muted hues of off-white, rose and the occasional accent of red lights or lanterns.  I was completely in love and felt a deep connection between the palette of the city and the one I tend to be attracted to while painting.

  

I tried to translate the texture of the walls and the geometry of the city through paint and was finding it difficult to obtain the richness through the materials I was using.  I then found a new obsession that I don't think I will be able to live without after this trip.  Strangely enough it’s modeling paste. It might be the most amazing material I discovered during our residency aside from the $1.50 acrylic paints.  I have always looked at it in the art stores in NY but was distracted by the familiarity of other materials and never tried it.  I was also inspired to push the texture of my work more while watching Pedro (my studio mate at CAFA), who was working in very thick layers of acrylic and oil paints. The materials are so cheap in Beijing, which allowed for the most ultimate freedom to experiment and push our work in ways that we normally wouldn’t.  For Pedro and I, it was thickness of paint and and for Amina and Isaac I think it was the liberty to work large as they both bought enormous stretched linen that was incredibly cheap compared to the prices we are used to back in NYC.

In the last week of our residency we got to show our work at the Dayungtang Museum.  Emerging Dialogs: A Museum Take Over, featured the work of thirteen artists, including Amina, Isaac, Pedro and I, with the artists we shared spaces with at CAFA. We all worked together to hang the show and we ended up having a really strong exhibition that we were all really proud of.

I never thought I would be traveling to Asia and am beyond grateful for the opportunity this residency has provided me. I truly hope I will be able to return one day and explore more of the city and its amazing art scene again in the future.  This residency has enabled me to find a part of myself I don't think I knew was there and inspired me to challenge/free my approach to the work I am making now and hopefully will make this year at the academy.  Thank you New York Academy of Art and CAFA for such a wonderful experience!