Kang Chunhui's Homage to Living Landscapes
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In 2019, Urumqi-born gongbi painter and video artist Kang Chunhui undertook a pilgrimage back to her native Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwest China.

Working in gongbi style, a meticulous realist technique in Chinese ink painting for depicting figurative or narrative subjects, Kang employs this tradition to conceive the boundaries between place, history, memory, self, and creativity not as rigid territories but as expansive areas for exchange and transformation.

As part of her project meditating on the central tenets of shan shui (traditional Chinese landscape painting), she revisited eight sites with historical, sociological, and cultural significance from her childhood to install bird and flower paintings made at different stages of her career. Each video is a translation of how Kang experiments with the portrayal of natural subjects with colour washes and forms that pay homage to history, memory, and place, rendered from pigments compounded from minerals she previously gathered at the sites to record her experience.

The eight-channel video Observing My Distant Self 73°40'E～96°23'E 34°25'N～48°10'N (2019–23) documents these paintings at their respective sites. Each is accompanied by a short essay by Kang noting how the mythological, cultural, and literary references implied in the artwork interact with the living environments as static backdrops.

The Kizilgaha Beacon, for instance, a military structure from the Han dynasty, serves as the setting for a canvas that has been almost swallowed by the night—a time of solitude and quiet for Kang, which she writes allows her to experience a longstanding view of history.

In the areas where the Kumtag Desert borders the urban environment, on the other hand, Kang considers the distinction between nature and its painted representation to discuss the idea that the boundaries between natural and artificial are contrasting but not opposing, and that the red flowers painted with natural pigments suggest that art may lean closer to nature than the human-made.

The resulting video is currently on view at INKstudio in Beijing as part of the exhibition Observing My Distant Self (25 May–30 August 2024). Across three floors, recent moving-image works, live-broadcast feeds, and ink paintings attest to Kang's evolving practice.

Notably, this is the first time the artist's videos have been exhibited more comprehensively, despite having completed an MFA in new media from Seoul National University in 2010. The focal point of her practice has been painting, developed from her training in traditional Chinese painting techniques that favour precise rendition. After graduation, Kang moved to Beijing to pursue a painting career, which she received early education on from her father, who is also a painter.

In Observing My Distant Self, the video medium serves as a bridge between time, retrieving the artist's memories of her journey from the past, and between the eight sites and the gallery space. Locations Kang selected in Xinjiang, such as the old town of Kuqa Old Town, were once Buddhist centres and crucial stops along the Silk Road. The trade route becomes a potent metaphor for Kang's work, which derives from a confluence of geographical and temporal influences.

In front of the Kizil Caves, reputed to be the earliest major Buddhist mural cave complex in China, stands a depiction of a single, crimson rose in ink. With its pale backdrop prominent against the desertscape, the work almost appears to be standing guard to the caves.

The piece is taken from Kang's first painting series, 'Flowers in the Whole Year' (2015), in which 12 precisely rendered flowers—one for each month of the year—are depicted with their root structures. The motif of the flower which later on transitioned into her 'Sumeru' series, according to the exhibition's curator, Nataline Colonnello.

The saturation of colour is a notable feature of Kang's 'Sumeru' series, in which matte-red flowers stand out against beige grounds, their colour and shadow modelled after draped fabrics in South and Central Asian and Hellenistic polychrome painting.

Kang first visited the Kizil Caves in 2006 to examine Buddhist murals and study their painting techniques. The crimson shade that is characteristic of her painting is handmade using pigments extracted from the red sandstone of the caves' canyons and cliffs, once frequented by local artisans, as well as 7 to 8 other natural pigments, including cinnabar and cochineal.

Kang said in a 2023 interview: 'From the many Kizil Caves I frequent, I recognise that the importance of painting lies in what cannot be seen; as in dimming lights in the caves, I relied on my eyes and mind to reimagine the murals.'

'The Hidden Protagonist' series (2022–24) attests to the influence on Kang's practice of both Chinese painting—through her preferred medium of ink and subject matters such as birds and flowers—and Western art history.

In the diptych The Hidden Protagonist No.2, Antonio Botticelli's Saint Sebastian and Venus, composed of delicate floral forms and peacock feathers, are only just discernible against the white backdrop made from mica and pearl. Nodding to the Buddhist tradition of unity between elements, Kang says she portrayed both icons anonymous to address 'the essential vitality of human existence' over individual particularity.

The artist's seven-metre scroll The Hidden Protagonist: Mount Fuchun (2023–24) likewise makes a reference to old masters. Kang created the piece after visiting the site that inspired Yuan dynasty painter Huang Gongwang's handscroll painting, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1350).

At INKstudio, both works are unrolled and exhibited alongside one another. Kang's landscape shows a view of Mount Fuchun across four seasons. Unlike Huang's precise illustration, her rivers and peaks are composed of pink peach blossoms. Recalling the continuous stroke of cao shu (cursive script), these blooms appear to have been dragged along the surface, while a unified composition forms when both edges of the scroll are aligned. Sighted beside Huang's masterwork, Kang's impressionistic take almost pulsates, innovating upon a living tradition. —[O]