Xiaohui Wang

Selection from “Stray” Series, 2020, 68 x 22 inches, Mix media

 

Tagore’s Stray Birds is a poetry collection of over 300 short verses contemplating some of the  most universal concepts, such as life and death, joy and sorrow, infant curiosity and elderly  wisdom, through nature, love and spirituality. It is one of the most influential works in modern  Chinese poetry but is far less well-known among western countries than his Nobel Prize-winning  Gitanjali. As my first English book and modern poetry book, Stray Birds introduced me, at the  age of 13, to a new territory of free expression and the simple beauty of the English language,  and completely changed my perspective toward life, the world and everything.  

 My new and ongoing series “Stray” is a collection of small “visual poetry” paintings, each  referencing one of the short verses from Tagore’s Stray Birds. The title “Stray” indicates both a  state of lostness and a sense of freedom, which are the two major concept of this project. The  entire installation maps out a world, immense and diverse to explore freely and get lost in. When  examined closer, each individual painting becomes a portal to a fragment of thought, intimate  and personal for viewers to delve into and identify with.  

Despite the wide range of materials, marks and mood, my creative process for all pieces are  similar. Before creating each piece, a verse is selected to reflect my mental state and relation to  my surroundings at the moment, and meditated upon until it is reduced to pure concepts and  blended with my own existence. Then a vision appears and the creation begins – plans are made,  processes are devised, colors are mixed, substrates are chosen and prepared accordingly. As I  follow through my plans I observe with wonder and awe a small world materialize under my  hands. In the end, each piece becomes a physical object representing an idea about the world  around us, both minuscule and cosmical.