Ah Xian | the artist

Spending nine months in China’s historical center of fine porcelain production, Jing De Zhen, Jiangxi Provence, brought Xian in contact with a number of local artisans, all of whom worked collaboratively to produce the works on display.  The porcelain body casts were meticulously hand-painted under Xian’s direction: traditional Chinese and Buddhist motifes were drawn to follow the contours of each individual body.  Each artisan specialized in a particular skill…

Works

Ah Xian’s Human human – lotus, cloisonné figure 1 2000-01 is an intricate life-size female figure made in the traditional technique of cloisonné…

Ah Xian is a Chinese-born artist who migrated to Australia. He however maintains a close connection with his homeland, particularly its artistic techniques. This exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery showcases some of his best work…

“Twenty years after the Cultural Revolution and after China has opened its door to the world, we as artists with a Chinese background, should have learned and been sufficiently influenced by Western philosophy, art and culture as a whole to attain a level of confidence and capability to tell story about ourselves using our own language. I feel that we should not need to tell stories about the Chinese situation only through the foreign languages that we have just learnt.”