At the Venice International Art Biennale, li Song's famous work "Skeleton Illusion" by the mainland Southern Song Dynasty painter appeared at the exhibition in the form of embroidery, which was instantly stunning.
"The big skull was wearing a gauze head, sitting on the ground in a long robe, and playing with a small skeleton hanging from the string on his right arm. A small child pounced on the little skeleton, and was stopped by the care of the woman wearing a cardigan behind her, while the woman behind the big skeleton was nursing her young son."
The skeleton matchmaker appears in the painting as a suspense puppet game, and the work uses hundreds of stitches to show surreal folk life scenes.
△ Venice Biennale Works - "Skull Illusion Series"
This is the first time in the history of Chinese embroidery that Su embroidery has entered the Venice Biennale as a contemporary art.
The creator of this work is the fourth generation of the "needle god" Shen Shou - Yao Huifen.
Yao Huifen
She is a Su embroidery artist, a national representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project (Su embroidery), a researcher-level senior arts and crafts artist, an expert enjoying special allowances from the State Council, the first Chinese embroidery art master, a master of arts and crafts in Jiangsu Province, a great craftsman in Jiangsu Province, and an advanced individual in the protection of China's intangible cultural heritage...
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The collision of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary aesthetics
Yao Huifen is the fourth generation of Shen Shou's fourth generation of shen shou, who is the founder of imitation embroidery, the third generation inheritor of Shen Shou, the senior arts and crafts artist of Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, and Mr. Ren Yanxian, a master of Chinese arts and crafts and the founder of virtual real and chaotic needle embroidery, and has been practicing art for nearly 40 years.
Born in a family of embroidery in Suzhou, she has been subtly influenced since she was a child. When she was a child, as long as she came home from school, Yao Huifen would put up a bandage to embroider flowers, and when it was dark in the evening, she would go into the yard and talk to trees, flowers and birds in the twilight to find inspiration.
Since her teenage years, Yao Huifen has been famous in the square for dozens of miles, and she has developed such habits and concepts: she does not like to embroider repetitive content; does not want to embroider for embroidery, only wants to be different; does not believe that dead embroidery can embroider good things.
As a representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project (Su embroidery), in more than 40 years of embroidery career, Yao Huifen has adhered to the comprehensive inheritance and watchful eye of traditional Su embroidery skills on the one hand; on the other hand, she has constantly used new ideas and techniques to "make subtle and vast", and enhance and surpass the traditional expression and aesthetic connotation of Su embroidery.
Because of the differences in birth, integration is bound to face subversion, and in traditional Su embroidery, this is a harsh challenge.
When traditional craftsmanship is combined with modern aesthetics, the more the stitching method changes, the more contradictory the more vivid, then Su embroidery has its own aesthetic logic, not the effect of brushwork, photography, oil painting, or the beauty of stitching itself.
There is no doubt that it worked out in the end. It not only promoted the new Su embroidery needle method, but also let the people of the world see the traditional Chinese art with heavy vitality.
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10 years of exploration and research original simple needle embroidery
"An embroidery lady in Suzhou has to divide 7,000,000 silk threads in her lifetime, so she can only have one thought."
This mind is how to pursue a more exquisite artistic dialogue.
Let's talk about a few details, and you know that this is almost the end of the universe of craftsmanship.
First of all, the wiring, wiring is the basic skill of the embroidery girl.
Just embroidering a ten-centimeter mountain, because of the thickness and light, needs dozens of kinds of silk threads of the same color.
The sub-line, on the other hand, is a test of fingertip kung fu.
Our common thin silk thread can also be divided into two piles, and one pile can be divided into eight silks.
A single strand of silk can be divided into eight cents.
That is to say, a thread that is already extremely thin in our eyes is actually composed of 128 hairs, and the embroidery lady must quickly separate it.
Therefore, Yao Huifen often said that "the hand must be well protected, and the embroidery can be embroidered well."
In Yao Huifen's heart, if you only regard Su embroidery as a livelihood skill, it is not difficult.
And if it is regarded as an art, it requires unlimited creativity.
Just like Shen Shou, the Su embroidery master at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, he gradually learned from the West and the East, invented the simulation embroidery, jumped out of the ancient category of the East, and let the world be in it.
For more than two thousand years, the longevity of Su embroidery is also because of this.
It lies in the ultimate artistic embodiment, but also lies in the exploration and pursuit of the unknown and the ultimate change.
Yao Huifen's invention of simple needle embroidery is also a breakthrough.
Simple needle embroidery is different from the traditional concept of random needle embroidery stitching techniques, which integrates traditional Chinese embroidery stitching methods and Western sketching techniques in one, and forms a new form of expression of Su embroidery with the least stitching method, the most plain thread color and the most refined lines.
The creation of "Jane Needle Embroidery" allowed Yao Huifen to obtain the National Invention Patent Certificate, and she began to vigorously promote this new Su embroidery technique.
A piece of embroidery by Yao Huifen
Her representative works "Four Beautiful Pictures" and "Zheng Banqiao Ink Orchid Bamboo Drawings" are collected by the British Museum and the University Art Gallery of London respectively. Representative works such as "Portrait of the Grape Maiden" and "Freehand Peony" in the "Jane Needle Embroidery Series" and "Freehand Embroidery Series" have been collected by the Suzhou Museum.
On the basis of fully inheriting the traditional stitching techniques, these works have absorbed new aesthetic concepts, and the form of the works is more concise and pure, and the aesthetic connotation is richer.
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Su Xiu is sowing the seeds of inheritance
As the inheritor and master of Su embroidery from Zhenhu, Yao Huifen has refused too many people's requests to worship the teacher along the way.
In order to make Su embroidery better inherited, the "Qinfen Embroidery Village" founded by Yao Huifen cooperated with several universities in Suzhou to open an embroidery interest class, and Yao Huifen personally taught embroidery skills.
"I really hope that some of them are willing to make embroidery their profession, and I want to absorb them into our art gallery, give them a salary, and pass on all the embroidery skills they have mastered," she said. ”
On the road of inheritance and innovation, Yao Huifen uses the traditional embroidery language to express the new form and aesthetic of contemporary Suzhou gardens, and uses the stitch combination of random needle embroidery and flat needle embroidery to portray the new atmosphere of freehand ink painting.
This change has not only made this Chinese contemporary Su embroidery artist, but also achieved the "beauty of Chinese embroidery" on the international art stage.
Thanks to an artistic master like Yao Huifen, even if the times change rapidly, traditional craftsmen still have a way to go and a branch to rely on.
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March 25 at 13:00 pm
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