Tears of Chiwen
Sun Xun
孙逊
Production date
2017
Object Detail
Media
video animation (color, sound)
Measurements
9 min 10 sec
Notes
Tears of Chiwen (2017) extends Sun Xun’s vocabulary of animated ink into new directions. Referencing the complex historical and contemporary relationships between China, Japan and Korea, Sun Xun comments on how western culture has sometimes been accommodated, sometimes resisted, and, finally, absorbed in different ways in East Asia. A ‘chiwen’ is a mythical animal generally seen as an ornament on a roof ridge, a guardian against fire and flood. One of the nine sons of the dragon in Chinese mythology, the chiwen’s tears here are a response to modernity and the loss of cultural identity. Like Sun Xun’s earlier works, Tears of Chiwen is deeply rooted in traditions of Oriental art, and the complexities of Asian history, within and beyond China. But Sun’s work is also inflected by his admiration for the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, his profound knowledge of modernist art and cinema – Vladmir Tatlin’s unbuilt ‘Monument to the Third International’ is a recurring image – and his extraordinary ability to synthesise diverse sources into works of startling originality.
Accession number
2017.104