The Chinese Version - Untitled 3

Jia

嘉

Production date
2013

Object Detail

Media
acrylic on canvas
Measurements
200 x 200 cm
Notes
Jia’s ‘The Chinese Version’ series is an exploration of the destruction wrought by Mao Zedong’s simplification of written Chinese in 1952, a program with the stated aim of improving literacy. Jia says that this was a cultural atrocity that destroyed thousands of years of the history of writing calligraphy. This series of paintings arranges Chinese characters according to formal rather than semantic criteria, alluding to censorship that ‘not only restricted expression, but also, to a degree, it restricted the ability to conceive certain ideas’. Influenced by her background and training in architecture and performance, Jia deconstructs and reconstructs Chinese characters, questioning who controls the written expression of thought.
Accession number
2015.230
Artist details