宋昕于1970年代出生于中国北京，是一位艺术家、版画家和教育家。她年轻时曾下乡写生，并接触到了当地剪纸师傅，自此，剪纸就成为她主要的创作媒介和研究对象。在中央美术学院学习传统艺术后，宋昕于2000年后定居美国，并在她数十年的艺术实践中始终坚持对传统手艺文化的热爱。在创作的同时，宋昕还投身教育事业，积极向西方的社区与学校推广中国的传统剪纸文化。在其作品中，她希望通过传统的剪纸训练，以拼贴的技法传达自己的审美理想、道德观念、唤起观者对当下时事、日常生活、流行与社会文化等话题的共鸣，力图将中国传统美学与当代语境组合革新。
Song Xin is an artist, printmaker and educator born in the 1970s in Beijing, China. Growing up, she first discovered papercutting from local villagers during her visits to the countryside and began practising the craft ever since. From her academic studies at China Central Academy of Fine Art, under the Department of folk art, to eventually settling in the United States in the 2000s, the artist has remained conscientious of preserving this traditional art form throughout her decade-long practice. Aside from working with the medium as an artist, she is also an educator who actively promotes this treasured part of Chinese culture to the local communities. Song desires to reflect her aesthetic ideals, moral principles and sentiments about current events, her daily life, and pop and political culture through her traditional training in paper-cutting and ultimately sublimates traditional Chinese aesthetics into the realm of contemporary form.
「视线 Sight Lines」展览现场
宋昕 Song Xin, 水系列 1 Water series 1, 2019
此次展出的作品为宋昕2013年至2023年间的创作，从她早期剪纸创作「钻石树」中源自传统剪纸的动物和植物图像元素到近期「水」系列中出现的超现实风格与几何抽象形的交织，展现了艺术家视觉语言上的丰富与多样性。每件作品都是由艺术家日积月累收集来的素材剪贴而成，包括照片、杂志、聚酯薄膜、版画、带有书法字迹的宣纸、甜品纸杯、从裁缝师母亲手里收集的花布等纸质材料及非纸质材料，种类极为丰富。她对材料独具实验性的运用方式与中国剪纸的历史实践也颇具相似性——历史上，剪纸手艺人也会使用其他薄质材料来雕刻镂空图案，如树叶、金银箔、丝绸和皮革。宋昕的材料选用多源于日常中汲取的灵感，也表现了平凡生活与艺术之间的相互渗透和连接。
Spanning the years 2013 to 2023, Song’s works gathered in this exhibition showcase the evolution of her rich visual language from the venerable animal and botanical motifs derived from traditional imageries in her earlier work, Diamond Tree, to a cocktail of geometric and abstract forms intertwined in surreal styles in her recent Water Series. Each collage displays an inventory of materials which the artist has diligently culled over the decades, consisting of photographs, magazines, mylars, prints, calligraphic paper cut-outs and paper doilies, as well as non-paper materials like collected fabrics given to her by her seamstress mother. This sense of experimentation with the materiality of the art form draws similarity to the historical records of Chinese paper-cutting, whereby the Chinese have also used other thin materials such as leaves, silver and gold foil, silk, and leather to carve hollowed patterns. Song predominantly uses material drawn from the domestic realm to signify the permeation, and connectivity of everyday life existence into art.
「视线 Sight Lines」展览现场｜纽约理工学院 参展项目
宋昕 Song Xin, 放射 Extension, 2019
与艺术家强调个人表达的纸质创作相反，她的黑白装置「放射」(2019) 作为公共项目，则更偏重于适应空间的特定性及委托要求。该作品是艺术家与美国纽约理工学院合作的一项参展项目，附带剪纸版本，以展现工业技术的创造性。「放射」由激光在有机玻璃板上切割出的十二块一模一样的几何图像组成，并以在纸质作品中极少采用且相对复杂的展现方式——悬垂、悬挂和玻璃层压进行展现。作品悬挂在画廊中庭的中心位置，通过周围的聚光灯，使光线穿过其图案形状，创造出错综复杂的光影游戏，不禁让人联想到中国传统剪纸中熟悉的窗花。
Offering a counterbalance to her self-reflective works, her black-and-white installation “Extension”, 2019, belongs to her category of public works, which focuses more on site-specificity and commissioned-based requirements. Originally a collaborative project with the New York Institute of Technology, the work was intended as a creative engagement with industrial technologies and came with a papercut version. Technically, it consists of nine geometrically laser-cut plexiglass panels and incorporates a rather complex presentation that includes draping, hanging, and glass lamination -rarely found in her more intimate works on paper. Here, occupying the centre of the gallery’s atrium, the display actively plays into the exhibited area by using the surrounding spotlights to create an intricate play of shadows as light passes through its patterned shape, reminiscent of traditional window paper cuttings (窗花, window flowers).
宋昕 Song Xin, 水系列 – 脑浊 06 Water series – brain water 06, 2021｜水系列 18 Water series 18, 2019
过去的二十年里，宋昕的作品及技艺不断发展、变化，但不变的是艺术家在每件拼贴作品中所投入的不可估量的时间、工艺和技巧。她对于作品的思考与探索未曾停息，对于拓宽人们对民间艺术鉴赏的努力亦是。
Song Xin’s highly detailed works are ever evolving over the past twenty years, but what remains constant is the considerable investment in time, craftsmanship and skill which each collage continues to lay claim to, and certainly, her dedicated engagement in charting new grounds for our appreciation of folk arts.
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