—Dandeli Art Center
While western art world is composed mainly of sculptures, paintings and architectural works, it is sculptures which are written in history as the oldest and firstly matured art form. This differs greatly from Chinese tradition, where studies of painting and calligraphy are celebrated while the art of sculptures is depreciated as an insignificant skill or merely as an attachment to architecture. The sculptor’s position is thus relegated to that of a craftsman and largely ignored by art history. Additionally, sculptures are a strong testament to the sensibility of space and the physical power of creator; hence, there are very few established female sculptors in China. Ma Shuyao is one of the rare female sculptors who has succeeded despite these challenges.
Ma Shuyao was born in Tianjin City in 1951. In Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period (BC772-BC221), Tianjin fell into the territory of Swallow Country and Zhao Country, one of the origins of Chinese traditional culture and the habitats of elite and legendary personalities. Therefore, Ma and her works are deeply influenced by the ethos of the land.
She made full use of realistic techniques in creating her statue of the barber, watermelon vendor, chess players and wrestler, revealing her true love and feelings to the folklore. She described her work, Folk-custom Series as follows: “I prefer to use commonness and details to reflect the value of time. While traveling in the city, people can feel the pulse and experience the aftertaste of history from them. Time flied but left traces. These figures are the medium between present day viewers and the past. That is the value I embedded in my realistic sculptures.” It is clear that Ma has sharp eyes at slight differences in her objects, but she is not to be bound by the constraints of reality. In a clear example of this, she bypassed the details and created The Mongolian Wrestler in a bold and resolute way.
Besides her concern with reality, she attempted to free the feelings and thoughts of females through abstract language. She gave prominence to abstract or half-abstract forms and encouraged the viewer to join the dialogue with her and her art. Thus, viewer has to use his or her own experience to interpret the work. Thought, The Sitting Bather, Gaze and The Goddess of Land are all works of this kind. Gaze illustrates a contemporary woman, independent and elegant who is gazing at the unknown far in the distance. The viewer may question what she is looking for and everyone will come to his or her own conclusion. Thought is a figure of a self-contained woman; she is thinking deeply and hiding her emotions under the silence. Ma admired tolerance, endurance and the power of women by The Goddess of Land. The simplified and massive female body echoes the beauty of nature and warms the viewer. The Sitting Bather is the artist’s imagination of a woman in the Tang Dynasty. It is in the fluent carved lines on the white marble that her natural and graceful form is revealed.
Ma Shuyao’s artworks are fulfilled with Chinese traditional culture and feminine qualities. Her art brings to the viewer a strong mixture of joy, intensity, exoticism and her own personality.
