CHAPTER ONE
WHERE ABOUTS #nomad art-making #egg tempera painting #oilpainting #texile art #craftswoman #performance #ceramics
Reliquary 35 x 35 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2018 Collection of the Copelouzos Family Art Musuem Athens, Greece
UNNY
J
Sunny J calls herself an erroneous narrator. She invents stories of identity confusions and plurality, and hides them under cruel eroticism. With a multifaceted practice spreading across painting, performance, textile, installation, and various crafts, her fundamental visual research rests on the definition of identity. She drains inspiration from the Dissociative Identity Disorder, portraying the mutual manipulation that happens between the selves within one body, and exploring the temporal and spatial discrepancies that result from such identity multiplication. Although the inquiry itself is universal, the artist’s initial motivation is highly personal. It is a constant interrogation vis-à-vis her own story as a Chinese woman wandering in Western countries. S unny J received her BA in Studio Arts from the University of Rochester (USA), and her MFA in Painting from the National Higher School of Visual Arts - “La Cambre” in Brussels, Belgium. She has been an artist in residency in China, Spain, Bulgaria, Belgium. Her works are in multiple private and public collections in three continents. Sunny J lives and works between Cincinnati and Brussels.
Pharmacia Installation (detail ) Painted ceramics, wood cabinet 2018
CHAPTER TWO
PA I N T I N G S #egg tempera #oil #acrylics #embroidery #crochet #surrealism #body #fantasy #macabre
The Dollhouse 190 x 140 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2018 Collection of GLO’ART Lanaken, Belgium
Gemini 107 x 84 cm Oil and tempera on canvas 2014
Gemini 107 x 84 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2014
TeintĂŠ IV 25 x 25 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2018
TeintĂŠ III 25.4 x 25.4 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2018
Chevalière! Alone 107 x 84 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2015
Cinderellote 40 x 30 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2015
À Berlin! à Berlin! à Berlin!
102 x 81 cm Oil-based tempera and acrylic on canvas 2014
Alixx im Wunderkammer 55 x 45 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2016
Faceless Queen No.2 40 x 30 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2015
Femme Aquarium 60 x 60 cm Oil and embroidery on canvas 2016
D’ailleurs, il faut pousser fort! Très fort! ø 30 cm Oil and embroidery on canvas 2016
Target 30 x 30 cm Oil on canvas 2016
Pebble People 100 x 80 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2016
Pomme d’Amour 40 x 30 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2015
Fois Deux 40 x 30 cm Oil-based tempera on canvas 2015
Every Step A Lotus Quadriptych 60 x 240 cm Embroidery, crochet and oil on canvas 2017
Every Step A Lotus (detail) Quadriptych 60 x 240 cm Embroidery, crochet and oil on canvas 2017
CHAPTER THREE
SOFT & H A R D #ceramics #sour-dough #baking #firing #sculpture #installation #yarn #fabric #thread #crochet #embroidery #sewing #knitting
OM No.3 12 x 10 x 4 cm Crochet and watercolor on paper 2016
Pharmacia Installation Painted ceramics 2018
During her one-month residency at AADK Spain, in the town of Blanca, Murcia, Sunny J investigates women’s expressions through materials found or used in local crafts, notably grass, textile, and clay. She aims to establish a relationship between the social landscape in Blanca and women’s shared life experiences, such as pregnancy, manual labor, confined space, and death. Her project is an ongoing collection and fabrication of elements that bounce between creation and repetition, between nature and architecture, between privacy and publicity. Altogether, she seeks to assemble a “library” of arranged objects and symbols which can converse and argue with each other, though in a silent manner.
Negra_Rebuilt Site-specific installation at Centro Negra,Blanca, Spain baked dough variable dimension 2017
Negra_Rebuilt
Rendez-Vous Stephanos Resch, a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder , has a mental twin brother Lucas. While Stephanos is optimistic about history and the human future, Lucas imagines every moment as destructive and the human race as a perpetual failure. What one believes to be the verity is an absolute fallacy in another’s mind. Yet both of the two brothers fail to realize that time is a giant Möbius strip: rushing into the future would finally take us back to the past; tracing one’s presumed truths would eventually land on another’s myths.
Apart from references to the human past back to the homo sapiens, this installation also borrows heavily from H.G.Wells’ 1895 novel The†Time†Machine. Wells imagines the human race as two species near the end of time: the Eloi live happily on the ground while the apelike Morlocks labor underground and feed on the carefree Eloi. The science of cryonics is also represented as a phase in human evolution. The technology of freezing people and preserving their thoughts incites wide controversy, as its success would mean that life in the future would no longerw involve a flesh body, but only an idealized vessel to contain human thoughts. Bodies would be useless and discarded; the universal death depicted in the Vanitas†would ultimately become a myth.
Rendez-Vous Installation Ink, silk, embroidery hoops. fishing wire, metal mesh 2014
CHAPTER FOUR
PERFORMANCE #deception #manipulation #authority #lies #narrative #body-art #collectivity #participation #community
Wedding of All Times Performance Gorna Lipnitsa, Bulgaria 2015
The Making of A Lady Performative Conference Galerie de la Reine Brussels, Belgium 2017
The Making of A Lady
At the exhibition Beyond the Body, organized by Belgian gallery Commonplaces, Sunny J presented an exclusive performance work specifically conceived for the exhibition.
“The Making of a Lady� traces the many legends and historical practices concerning the modification of the human body, especially the female body. Traditions such as the Amazonian warrior women cutting off one breast to facilitate hunting, human skin books and shoes, Chinese feet-binding, are explained and illustrated in this performative conference. The aim is to provoke reflection and conversations beyond the body, and dive into the relative force struggles in societal, political, and economical domains.
Not A Single One
Not A Single One explores the coexistence of multiple identities within the same person, and also tests the public’s credulity to “official” information. Sunny J secretly invented two personas who publicly joined her exhibition: Anastazja Luna (Madame Luna) is a professional fortune-teller from France. Her last name “Luna” is chosen as opposed to the famous French fortune-teller Mme Soleil, and also opposite to the artist’s name, Sunny. Madame Luna is featured as a guest artist, exhibiting her large-scale drawings in juxtaposition to my paintings. These drawings are based on her reading of the artist’s life, using the Tarot cards the artist designed for her. Minse Zonge is an Austrian art critic and curator. Her name, pronounced in the French way, has the connotations: “minces songes – meager thoughts”, or “mensonges – lies”. Minse Zonge fictionally curates this same exhibition in the cultural context of Vienna, and publishes an exhibition catalogue.
Exhibition Poster “Not A Single One“ Opening on 1 May 2015 464 State St. Gallery, Rochester, NY, USA
Selected Tarot J Cards Digital painting 2015
Selecte Tarot J Cards in a modified Planetery Spread Exhibition “Not A Single One�
‘Tis the Lady of Shalott Inspired by the cursed Lady of Shalott in the Victorian balland by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, this performance explores control and manipulation. Sunny J attached 59 red strings of various lenghs to her hair, ears, fingers, toes, and dress; the visitors were invited to hold the other end of each string during their entire visit to the gallery. They could request an extension by tying a longer string to their end, allowing them to move further away from the artist. The visitors were free to exert violence or gentleness to the strings and thus manipulate my movements and whereabouts as they wish. By walking around the gallery, restraining and controlling one another’s movements, the audience members and the artist created a fluid human web.
‘Tis the Lady of Shalott Happening on 9 February 2015 Sage Art Center Rochester, NY, USA
TIE This 6-hour performance is an homage to life, aiming to commemorate the victims of recurring manmade and natural catastrophes. The artist hung 147 red strings to the ceiling (in honor of the 147 innocent students killed in Kenya on April 2, 2015). She then cut each string multiple times until the total number of cuts exceeded 4000, the first official estimate of casualty in the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The floor was covered by numerous small sections of red threads, and almost none left on the ceiling. After cutting, she started to tie all the small bits of red threads together back into one ball of yarn. Tying the threads back together will never smooth out the knots and erase the cutting. Reconstruction will never erase the damage done during the tragedies. The artist is grateful to the Interfaith Chapel of the University of Rochester for its pioneering role in facilitating conversations. The Chapel’s sacred serenity is an integral part of this performance.
TIE Performance on 14 May 2015 Interfaith Chapel, Rochester, NY, USA
Wedding of All Times
Invited to the Old School Residency in Gorna Lipnitsa, Bulgaria, Sunny J carried out a wedding for the union of two times, Past and Future, by impersonating the two brides herself. Despite the theme of unity, the motif of division is omnipresent. This sharp contrast raises the ultimate question: by uniting the past and the future, do we achieve the present? Does the fusion of memories and predictions create the “now”? Moreover, the artist intentionally left out the continuous flow of time in this piece. There is neither romantic encounter before the wedding, nor honeymoon after. Everything happens at the moment and freezes at the present, awkwardly inserting a “now” into the gap of past and future. The Wedding of All Times is eventually a satire, mocking our doctrinaire perception of time as being linear and unidirectional. For more information, visit: www.sunny-j.com/wedding-of-all-times-
Wedding of All Times Performance on August 21 2015 Gorna Lipnitsa, Bulgaria
CHAPTER FIVE
RESUME #Chinese #USA #Belgium #polymorphic artist #transnational art practice #art-based researcher #educator
EDUCATION
RESIDENCIES
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2015-17 MFA - Painting ENSAV– La Cambre Brussels, Belgium
2018 GLO’ART Residency Lanaken, Belgium
2016
2011-15 BA – Studio Arts University of Rochester Rochester, USA 2013-14 Académie de la Croix-Nivert Paris, France Académie des Beaux-Arts Nantes, France
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2018 Reliquaires La Résidence Municipal Art Center Dompierre-Sur-Besbre, France 2018 Wunderkammer Galerie Alpha Thiers, France 2016 Shell Shangyuan Art Museum Beijing, China 2015 Not A Single One 464 State Street Gallery Rochester, USA
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS “Voyage to the Future” Mural Project Wilson Commons University of Rochester “73 Pagina Dos” permanent sidewalk engraving Art Walk Project University Avenue, Rochester
2017 AADK Residency Centro Negro, Blanca, Spain 2016 International Residency Program, Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing, China 2015 Old School Residency Gorna Lipnitsa, Bulgaria
Weekend Salon Koala Space Tianjin, China Rose était presque kaki Avenue Louise 186 Brussels, Belgium Ritual Art-Time and Space traveling exhibition Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Ruse, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria 2015
CATALOGUES
Rebuild Maker’s Gallery and Studio Rochester, USA
Willy Gilissen, dir., Glo’Art, art center catalogue Glo’art Center, 2019
Art Awake 936 Exchange Street Gallery Rochester, USA
Elpida Livanou, ed., 35 x 35 Art Project, catalogue, Copelouzos Family Art Museum, 2019
Rochester Erotic Arts Festival Radisson Riverside Hotel Rochester, USA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
(en)Gendered: Between Identities and Environments Art & Music Library Rochester, USA
2017 Finalist Exhibition for 2017-18 selection of artist-members of La Case de Velazquez (Academy of France in Madrid) Salle Comtesse de Caen Academy of Fine Arts Paris, France
2014 Nana ASIS Gallery Rochester, USA
Shell Niko Matcha Salon Brussels, Belgium
Say Something GlobeMed Art Gala Art Museum of Rochester Rochester, USA Abundance Bridge Art Gallery, Office of Mental Health Promotion, URMC Rochester, USA
Troposphère Espace 6B Saint-Denis, France
Annual Members Show Rochester Contemporary Art Center Rochester, USA
Hush-Hush Salle Delvaux, Free University of Brussels Brussels, Belgium