"Artist Village Chief" Jin Le died
Jin Le (file photo)
Jin Le's sculpture "Hot Winter Fruit"
According to the Lanzhou Evening News on January 13, 2021, Jin Le, an associate professor, artist and director of the Shijiezi Art Museum of the School of Fine Arts of Northwest Normal University, passed away at the age of 55. The sculpture "Hot Winter Fruit" of Xiguan Cross in Lanzhou City is one of his representative works.
Jin Le, born in 1966 in Qin'an, Gansu Province, graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1991 and graduated from the postgraduate class of the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2000. He is currently a teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Northwest Normal University. His hometown, Shijiezi Village, in Yebao Town, Qin'an County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, is a small mountain village hidden deep in the mountains, with more than 60 people in 13 households. In the 1980s, he was admitted to the university, becoming the first college student in the village, and after graduation, he taught at Northwest Normal University. Although he jumped out of the "agricultural gate", Jin Le, who came from the mountainous area, never forgot his father and fellow villagers living in the countryside. In 2008, by chance, he was elected as the "Honorary Village Chief" by the villagers of ShiJiezi, and since then he has called himself the village chief and devoted himself to the creation of an art village. He took the villagers to Germany to participate in the 12th Documenta exhibition in Kassel, founded the first rural art museum in China, the Shijiezi Art Museum, and held a film festival. Jin Le made a small mountain village hidden deep in the mountains famous and became a social practice base for 10 art academies.
The special thing about the Shijiezi Art Museum is that the whole village is an art museum. There are 13 households in the village, that is, 13 branches, and what participants see and feel is part of the art. Since 2008, Shijiezi has held nearly 100 events of all sizes, and thousands of people have come to the village. Art has brought earth-shaking changes to the village, and has also changed the reality and basic conditions of the villagers' existence.
Jin Le's creation of an art village is to give villagers the opportunity to have relationships with art and artists and communicate face-to-face; to have the opportunity to go to the metropolis to investigate, think about it, re-understand themselves, and reduce the gap; let more people pay attention to the villagers, change the village, and provide a new possibility for the construction of new rural areas.
Hearing the news of Jin Le's death, Duan Jianshan, former vice chairman of the Gansu Provincial Artists Association, and many other people in the cultural and artistic circles posted articles on WeChat to express their condolences. Ma Busheng, honorary chairman of the Provincial Writers Association, forwarded an article about Jin Le in the circle of friends and inscribed: Jin Le is gone! Art is important, rain is more important. Focus on human survival. This is an interview with depth and temperature, and maybe it will make us understand a little bit. In memory of Jin Le.
Feng Yulei, president and editor-in-chief of Silk Road Magazine, said: "Mr. Jin Le has carried out artistic practice in shijiezi village, where he was born, like many quaint villages, and has persisted for several years and achieved extraordinary results. For life itself, it is difficult for artists to change. After all, in Shijiezi Village, in a small mountain village in the multitude of Loess Plateaus, rain is more important than art. But Mr. Jin Le's spirit of struggle like Sisyphus's, his thoughts, actions and works of land art will be engraved in people's memories. Mr. Jin Le showed with his lifelong struggle: No matter who you are, as long as you experience helplessness, pain, despair, and anger, it is related to me and art! What a deep love! ”
The poet and calligrapher He Shuangxuan sighed: "Knowing him, I was shocked when I saw his sculpture "Centipede Man" and his installation "Rat Man"! I didn't expect his later artistic practice to be so persistent and pioneering. Pay tribute to him because his explorations trigger ripples of thought: What is art? Now that the Scythians are gone, God is still there! ”
Lanzhou Daily all-media reporter Peng Weiguo text/photo