Grandmother’s House
Dong Yuan
董媛
Production date
2018-2019
Object Detail
Media
oil and acrylic on canvas
Measurements
installed 260 x 1045 x 550 cm
Notes
When Dong Yuan learned that the place of her happiest childhood memories –– her grandmother’s house in the countryside near Dalian –– was about to be demolished, she decided to re-create it in paint, one room at a time, in a two-year-long project that she described as ‘fixing it in memory’. The first iteration of this work was exhibited in Beijing in 2013 as ‘A Short History of Everything: Grandma’s House and Bosch’s Garden’, an installation that married the fantastical universe imagined by Hieronymus Bosch in ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ with a rural Chinese family home, replete with heavy furniture and cabinets filled with teacups, rice bowls, folded flowered quilts and New Year pictures. The second iteration of the work in the White Rabbit Collection presents a different view of Grandmother’s House, with a focus on different domestic and ritual objects. Each of the 583 separate canvases reveals, in minute and lovingly rendered detail, a childhood memory of home.
Accession number
2018.057