Hua Jin

February 24–March 28, 2013

Vernissage  February 27, 5 à 7

(black box)

Before I had studied Chan for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers. 

— Qingyuan Weixin

The question of timelessness seems most apparent when one’s confronted with the sensation of stillness and solitude. Conversing in the Passing of Time attempts to mediate the sense of emptiness and timelessness through the notion of landscape in photography and mixed media installation.

The sense of smell can often trigger a slice of forgotten memory. An image in repetition can bring sound before vision. This is my experience of encountering “Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)” and “Mountain”.  The former is a series of black-and-white photograph of herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine. Each photograph consists of one piece medicinal herb, used and dried, are enlarged with microscopic lens. The latter, an installation of flour, hand-sculpted on a long wooden beam.

“There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being.”

The idea of no existence without being co-existence, no meaning without sharing, no self without the other – the quotation from Jean-Luc Nancy’s Being Singular Plural, sums up beautifully Jin’s “TCM” and “Mountain”. Both works resonate an omnipresence of human, of being alive – an overarching experience that can be traced in Jin’s other photographic works. They are alluring and poignant in the unsettling sensation within tranquility. There are silent dichotomies awaiting – cold and warm, wet and dry, sound and silence, absence and presence of human/consciousness, black and white, used and renewal, all within the notion of repetition performing difference in sequence of movements in co-existence.

Statement

Mountain is an installation that deals with the subject of impermanence and temporality in relation to Buddhism’s point of view of observing this reality. Mountain aims to create a mind-landscape, which put the audience in a rather distant and dethatched point of view to observe and to understand the reality.  The suspension suggests the instability of the existence. The material of the powder implies the basic elements of this physical world. The solid becomes fragile, the stone becomes sand within these constant changes time plays a virtual role to let it go and to let it grow.

Bio

Hua Jin is a visual artist who has exhibited photo-based works in Canada, USA, China, and the Netherlands. Jin was born in China and lived in Shanghai before moving to Canada in 2007. Jin’s works are included in many publications and private collections including the public collection of Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai (MOCA). She was the Emerging Artist of the 2012 Vancouver Mayor Art in Visual Art; the winner of Canadian SnapStar photo competition (2012), the winner of TOP20 Chinese Contemporary Photographer Award (2011), and she received first place in the Canon Photography Awards in the 2012 Emily Carr Grad Exhibition. After Jin graduated from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in 2012 for her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography, Jin currently is pursuing her MFA at Concordia University. 

Curator’s bio

Sally Lee is a multidisciplinary artist whose process-based works employ social practice as means of experimentation and negotiation between the boundaries of public spaces and the notion of intimacy. Lee holds a MFA from Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, and a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lee has curated and exhibited nationally and internationally, including Centre A and Belkin Satellite in Canada, Liu Haisu Museum in China, public works in Erfurt and Weimar in Germany, 12th DMZ Festival in Korea and Bétonsalon in Paris. Lee was born in Hong Kong, and she currently lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.