The Art Issue: What Kinds of Selves Live Inside an Artist’s Studio?
Sun Yitian’s artificial objects mirror some of the most urgent discussions of our time: consumer society, mass reproduction, luxury and imitation, commodity culture, and globalization. On a more immediate level, they may also evoke a generation’s nostalgia projected onto things, the distinctly tactile childhood memory of the pre-millennial era.
In Sun Yitian’s recent works, those familiar smooth objects remain at the center of attention, yet what has become increasingly striking is the environment surrounding them: ever more delicate, dreamlike nocturnal landscapes of nature. Whether a moonlit beach, a forest under the stars, or an open field charged with lightning, these settings resemble fragments of an inner realm accidentally illuminated. If the associations triggered by artificial objects are those of reproducibility, then the state of mind through which they are rendered in painting belongs to an irreproducible moment, one tied only to the artist’s own inner experience in that instant.
As AI technology pushes us into an age of even smoother visual mass production, the act of painting through physical materials has itself become a luxurious ritual. To record mass-produced smoothness through brushwork has suddenly shifted from being a kind of memorial to an era into a forward-looking form of resistance. Efficiency-driven manufacturing always takes smoothness as its essence. If such production seeks to overstep into the territory of creation itself, and even evolves toward monopolizing the world, people will still try to leave traces of struggle within that smoothness that threatens to engulf everything. In that sense, to record smoothness is also to make a lucid distinction, and to preserve something of the self.
When an era measures everything through the logic of the product, and when all creation begins to seem reproducible, using the unevenness of intuition to resist the smoothness of mass production will become an increasingly subtle form of expression. The market may have countless reasons for its preferences, but the artist is responsible only to the inner life.
Q: Could you introduce your studio?
A: My studio is in Shuipo Village in Shunyi, Beijing. When traffic is light, it takes about forty minutes to get to the city center. There are many young creative practitioners here, and also many migrant workers who have come to Beijing, since rents in the suburban apartment compounds are relatively low. I like this mixed condition. Everyone is tucked away at the edge between city and countryside, doing completely different things, yet all shopping at the same supermarket. People in the village do not care what art is, and I can simply close the door and paint.
Q: What is the studio to you? A shelter? Another home? A castle? A utopia? An extension of the body?
A: A shelter, probably. Though sometimes when a big crew comes for a shoot, it can feel like my home territory is being invaded. (Laughs)
Q: One of the most ceremonial moments during this shoot was probably when you posed with the tapestry derived from She Waits, But She No Longer Weeps. The first time I saw this work, I was deeply struck by it. It seems to carry a great deal of your response to the world. You mentioned that the model was your mother. Why did you choose to use your mother’s image to carry the figure of Meng Jiangnü?
A: When I was little and practicing portrait drawing, my mother was always my best model. She was always ready to sit for me, and could remain completely still. So much so that when I grew up, almost every female figure I painted ended up resembling my mother a little. In this image, I wanted to present a woman who is strong and resolute, no longer the fragile, crying Meng Jiangnü I encountered in books as a child. When Andrew Wyeth painted Christina’s World, he had his healthy wife play the role of Christina, the disabled woman next door. In many past narratives of art history, women often existed as a kind of spectacle, and suffering was often consumed as a symbol. At the time, I wanted my mother to play the protagonist in the painting herself, rather than to play Meng Jiangnü or the pain she represents.
Q: In artistic creation, what often moves people most are emotional moments, while theoretical research helps trace the structures behind that sensibility. It may construct and interpret them, or dismantle and demystify them. How has your PhD experience influenced your work? Do you ever feel a tension between the two?
A: My PhD experience has given me a more macro perspective, or perhaps just a different angle, from which to understand artistic creation, whether my own or that of others. It has also allowed me to dig more deeply into why I paint the way I do. But I would never use the methods of theoretical research to make a painting. If I did that, I simply would not be able to paint. They are two different working methods.
Q: Objects both carry and shape the memory and emotions of an era, and are deeply tied to social, economic, and cultural change. Even ordinary, everyday things can be charged with broad and profound meaning. In this field, you are both an artist and a researcher. When selecting and handling imagery in your work, does the main driving force come from intuition or meaning? Do you consciously filter and control this information?
A: The main driving force definitely comes from intuition. To me, intuition is the most trustworthy thing, and also the most moving. Making art is not like solving a math problem. If every output is directed toward meaning, it becomes very boring. Of course, intuition does not come from nowhere. It is built on your knowledge, cultivation, and experience.
Q: You have also actively experimented with new media and methods such as NFTs and AI. How do you see their impact on artistic creation?
A: Painting is a very old form, but as a young artist, I am very willing to try new languages and new tools. They constantly push me to rethink what painting means at this moment, and what I should paint next, and how I should paint it.
Q: You have been photographed many times by fashion and culture magazines. How do you view the idea of fashion magazines photographing artists in a major editorial format? What kind of impact have these experiences had on you?
A: Perhaps artists make very good material for fashion magazines. They have different personalities, different creative identities, and all kinds of studio environments. These shooting experiences have allowed me to observe how people in different fields work, and how different industries function. They have also introduced me to many interesting and very different people.
Q: Before this shoot, I had formed a preconceived image of you through media reports and other secondhand information. I assumed you might be proud, difficult to approach, perhaps even wary of being shaped by fashion media. But on set, you showed complete trust in and openness toward the photographer’s and stylist’s ideas and arrangements, accepting everything as it unfolded. I do not know whether my observation is accurate, but how did you feel about that? Where does this openness come from?
A: It comes from respect for other creators, I think. Whether it is the photographer, makeup artist, or hairstylist, they all have their own ideas and styles. Once I have agreed to the shoot, I should not impose my own will on everyone else, just as I do not like other people telling me how to paint.
Q: For this shoot, you were asked to wear a pair of courtly Rococo-style shoes from a V&A collaboration, which inevitably called to mind Marie Antoinette’s shoes. At first I was a little worried you might resist them, since they did not seem to fit the so-called temperament of an artist, but you accepted them very naturally. Later I felt that the shoes were almost made for you. Marie Antoinette, too, became famous at a young age, and fame brought judgment and controversy with it. What I find interesting is that artists often give fashion a very different narrative. What was your first reaction when you saw those shoes?
A: I absolutely loved them. I have painted many high heels myself, and every pair of shoes carries a very different history and a very different story. I hope I might have the chance to own them one day.
Q: The photographer suggested having you sit on top of the refrigerator. The original idea was to present the kitchen as the most lived-in part of the studio, and also to photograph you with that famous feminist poster. You sat high on top of the fridge, above everyone else in the room, with everyone looking up at you. The refrigerator was brightly colored and already carried certain associations, and together with the sweet skirt and those Rococo-style shoes, it created a very particular image. What did that moment feel like to you?
A: I was afraid the refrigerator was going to collapse.
Q: As a painter, you are usually the one observing and shaping the world. In a fashion shoot, however, you become the one being observed and shaped. How does that shift feel to you?
A: It feels a bit like becoming one of the objects in my own paintings. I do not have to think about anything. I can just let people dress me up.
Q: What kinds of expectations do you have for this type of shoot? Or do you also feel wary or skeptical?
A: I always have expectations for every shoot, especially the expectation of seeing a different version of myself being created in front of the camera. Of course, what I remain wary or skeptical of is that this difference is still only a difference produced by being shaped.
*Images courtesy of W China
