Jia Sung is a Singaporean Chinese artist and educator whose practice spans painting, artist books, textiles, printmaking, writing, and translation. Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, Sung uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert conventional archetypes of femininity, queerness and otherness. Her recent work explores threads of ecofeminism, ethnoecology, the ecological capacities of the body, invasive species as family, and the potentials of collective and constant human transformation through interspecies dynamics. Her approach draws from that of the Chinese zhiguai tradition, that genre of ‘strange tales’ cannot be translated directly through the lens of horror. The supernatural, the monstrous, the spiritual, seep into the tidy confines of ordinary existence, often humorous, arbitrary, smearing at the boundaries of our reality and then slinking away just as rapidly. Here is shapeshifter, here is trickster, things that inhabit liminal space and refuse to be held in place or form; the profane invades the interior, wilderness enters the domestic space, phenomena defy causation and morality, creature refutes taxonomy.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
Episode co-host: Jennifer Sodini
Yoshino is a multi-hyphenate artist and the host of Artist Decoded.
Yoshino’s Links:
yoshinostudios.com
yoshino.substack.com
instagram.com/yoshinostudios
twitter.com/yoshinostudios
“Born in the UK I now live and work in Los Angeles.
I studied fine art at UCA just outside London in the early 90s then moved to Italy for 7 years to immerse myself in classical art. On my return to London I started a successful fashion career that took me around the world, shooting for esteemed clients and magazines for 15 years.
In 2013 I decided to return to fine art. This coincided with a move to Los Angeles, where I built a studio practice that broadened my horizons to include sculpture, painting, installation and video works.
And this is where I’ve landed and feel comfortable, in that liminal space between art and commerce, recording the body clothed and unclothed using photography, video and 3 dimensional form making. The merging of these disciplines is what inspires me, creating immersive installations that ask questions of who we are and how we interact with each other, how our bodies are perceived in societal roles and how we can move past these structured ideas.” - James Mountford
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
artistdecoded.com
jamesmountfordstudio.com
instagram.com/jamesmountfordstudio/