PURPLE CHILD
Artist feature: Zizi Li
@lavendersquared
By Frankie Caracciolo
@lavendersquared
By Frankie Caracciolo
- Zizi, meaning “purple child” in Mandarin, was raised in Japan to Chinese parents while receiving a western education. Her “Bloodline” series of paintings unpacks our assumed understanding of just that—the claret as much as the lineage—through novel visual representations which explore the conceits of genealogy and identity.
The personal is likewise the familial; the two are kindred terms, varyingly enforced according to eastern and western cultural mores. As such, Zizi paints with an imbued touch, multiple cultural traditions and technical processes cohering in her works which immediately stake out their presence when regarded through her use of centering abstract and figurative strokes on her canvases which are surrounded, as it were, by a sea of calm, white blankness that, too, is laden with intention contraflow to the depth of the pigmented space.
These various influences—inherited, learned, lived—find expression in the apparent and nuanced strokes of her work. A core principle of wabi-sabi philosophy is the acceptance of transience and imperfection, an appreciation of the transitive relationship between what is there and what is not, is directly seen in her starkly delineated use of negative space in each composition. Wabi-sabi was ever-present in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto where she was raised, existing beneficently in tandem to yuánfèn, a prevailing way of thought in China—the tenets of which were passed down to her through her grandmother and mother and encapsulated in the Chinese proverb: It takes hundreds of rebirths to bring two people to ride in the same boat; it takes a thousand eons to bring two persons to share the same pillow.
Two people brought together by indispensable serendipity and predestined chance. Studying calligraphy, sketching by the lotus pond she’d visit in her youth, this consideration of life lived serendipitously, streaked by what was ordained, apriori, for oneself—what was apparent made evident by what was purposefully absent—assumed a natural clarity to her as she watched the seasons change from her tatami-sized backyard garden.
These dual sensibilities are captured in her raw cotton canvases, bright and open, the dark pigment rendered, with each successive brushstroke, like paint moving through water, the memory of sumi ink’s sweet musk scent trailing each motion of acrylic paint. Where her artistic inspirations are concerned, Zizi looked to her past while seeing the collective impression of Eastern traditions in a Modernist analogue. While traveling and studying in the West, regarding Hans Bellmer’s painting La Toupie (1937)—with its wispy, smoke signal-like movement—she was reassured of her own praxis of blending artistic traditions.
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Even with Bellmer’s influence, Zizi considers her artistic expression to hold the strongest visual ties to Gongbi—an ancient Chinese ink painting tradition with a floral focus that has its roots in Chengdu, her mother’s hometown. Countenancing Bellmer’s fluidity and the open yet striking compositions of Gongbi masterworks gave credence to her acknowledgment of her essence as fluid, a dialogue between the past and present, of childhood and transgenerational memories, and three generations of women before her. Thus compelled, she revisited her Bloodline” series of paintings, began in 2010, and now, finally, complete.
In her mind’s eye, Zizi sees each experience and influence—from her childhood surrounded by wabi-sabi and yuánfèn, and practice of traditional Gongbi painting, to her encounter with Hans Bellmer's La Toupie—as a bead of water that catches light, glimmers, and rolls across the palm of a lotus leaf, converging at the leaf’s center. There, she finds and recognizes the nectar of her being. The “Bloodline” series, just as much as the artist herself, is here before you, raw and incomplete. At once lacking and wholesome; calm and striking.
While based in Tokyo, if travel is in her nature, it is to nurture a sense of self passed down to her by her family and expressed through her art. Zizi’s works have been featured in L’Officiel Italy and Rouge Fashionbook among other titles. She also holds a BBA from the Parsons School of Design.
In her mind’s eye, Zizi sees each experience and influence—from her childhood surrounded by wabi-sabi and yuánfèn, and practice of traditional Gongbi painting, to her encounter with Hans Bellmer's La Toupie—as a bead of water that catches light, glimmers, and rolls across the palm of a lotus leaf, converging at the leaf’s center. There, she finds and recognizes the nectar of her being. The “Bloodline” series, just as much as the artist herself, is here before you, raw and incomplete. At once lacking and wholesome; calm and striking.
While based in Tokyo, if travel is in her nature, it is to nurture a sense of self passed down to her by her family and expressed through her art. Zizi’s works have been featured in L’Officiel Italy and Rouge Fashionbook among other titles. She also holds a BBA from the Parsons School of Design.
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