ONCE—OVER Duan Jianyu: Yúqiáo

[Mousse]

The first English-language catalogue dedicated to the Guangzhou-based artist.

Yúqiáo (The Fisherman and The Woodcutter) No. 2, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space Duan Jianyu: Yúqiáo is the first English-language catalogue dedicated to the Guangzhou-based artist Duan Jianyu. It accompanies her first major UK solo exhibition in more than a decade and the inaugural programme at the London-based non-profit project space YDP (Yan Du Projects, 4 October–20 December 2025).  The catalogue features twenty new paintings that reimagine “yúqiáo”—a classical Chinese motif of a fisherman and a woodcutter as wise, reclusive figures—into Duan’s shape-shifting characters: goats, cows, a black cat detective, and the artist herself, revealing quiet wisdom, humour, and vitality in daily life. Functioning as a parallel dialogue to the exhibition, the catalogue sits between conventional documentation and an artist’s book, echoing Duan’s distinctive narrative approach and inviting readers to drift through the textures of her imaginative world. Creative writings by Yang Zi and Bang Wang, an essay by Lydia Yee, and a conversation between Duan and Yang offer multiple perspectives on the artist’s practice, rooted locally yet resonant globally. Below you can read an excerpt from the contribution by Bang Wang featured in the publication.  Yúqiáo (The Fisherman and The Woodcutter) No. 6, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space A Conversation with Duan Jianyu’s Painting by Bang Wang   Born to Burn What would it have felt like to be born in ancient China? To be born with a perfect tongue only to orchestrate silence? To enter a forbidden city where only crown chrysanthemums are allowed to bloom? To permanently bow like a miniature bonsai pine tree? To congregate in a chess square surrounded by marble kings, rooks and pawns at all time? To be pushed like a herd of goats ever closer to the abyss of a dark purple dream? To sing the cows and realise that idyllic life is only probationary, as cows turn into minotaurs? To be leashed by a string of musical notes that loop around your neck like the Yellow River – the motherly river of the pre-Qin Dynasty? To be loved by an immortal king whose fat hand pats your wingless shoulder day and night?  To sedate yourself into a nationwide tranquillity.  We think of our ancestors, still, we burn with the desire to be born.  Burn, burn, like dying feathers of a burning flame that will become a phoenix, like the sun rising into existence. Born in China. Born to be an artist. Born to be an eye in a dark socket perpetually aching for light.   Yúqiáo (The Fisherman and The Woodcutter) No. 7-1, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space The Waterfall In Chinese, the word for ‘missing’ is ‘shi (失)’; it takes the shape of an empty palm. But in ancient Chinese paintings, the missing entities – the absence of content in the white space – are the opposite of ‘shi’. The white space is meant to be the dwelling of the abundant, a feast of light and enlightenment.  But what if the white space is merely a void for the reality that we dare not convey in ink? What if the void is not a symbol of emptiness but is itself a white tomb?  Shall we play truth or dare? Shall we meet in the wilderness with our empty palms? Shall we dive into the white space to interrogate its actual contents?  You, the artist, and I, the audience. Have you heard the sound of the waterfall striking the roots of trees?  What does a code signify? Is that what art is? Is the widening white space a waterfall, a widening sheet of untold history?  The quiet, white, violent space – the negative space that traditionally gives sanctuary to our profound philosophical significance – could well be the white tomb lying beneath our artistic DNA, never once spilling a teardrop in memory of the untold, like the unbreakable word, ‘tradition’ – shall we break it with an axe?  We might as well cave in and retreat to our nationwide tranquillity.  We could, if we wanted, create a picturesque ancestral life and post it daily on WeChat; a life among peaceful antiquated temples, golden Zen retreats and ultramarine seaside resorts without the momentum of a sea. As women born after ancient times, we could use our privilege to resurrect whatever ancient art form – embroidery, for example – starting from the farming of fat silkworms and ending with the last stitch in the last breath of a peony or the final blink of a red carp, harmonised with a well-balanced white space.  We have lived through modernity and post-modernity, where highways, facial recognition and AI pop up like fungi. Whichever era we live through, some ritualistic practices that cement the virulent patterns of an ancient China will still be concealed within it. The world is still full of fresh cuts. Time is a keeper of all defunct things: the ‘beauty’ of brutality, the emperor’s power and his wives’ pretty bones.  Or shall we push? Push into the waterfall, push into the vast volume of water that weighs the same as a great wall. Let’s push into it!  Let’s dive into a world of softer colours, a life illuminated by a nightingale. God is a midnight DJ. The moon is a pilgrim of a million-year prayer. You and I both know what truly holds our core tight.  Let’s meditate on water and be water. Only by being water do we know all the atoms of a waterfall.   CONTINUE READING   Yúqiáo (The Fisherman and The Woodcutter) No. 17, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space Instagram  Facebook  X  LinkedIn   Mousse Magazine and Publishing via Decembrio 28, 20137 Milan Contact us here You have received this e-mail because you have successfully subscribed to Mousse Magazine and Publishing newsletter. You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this distribution list at any time.  Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up here.