Jie YANG and Xiaoyan WU are two talented young artists studying in the south-west of China for their Masters’ degrees in Sculpture. During their eight-week residency in this new city, exploring a new culture, new materials and new formats, they have accomplished three groups of works in this exhibition.
artist: Jie YANG, material: wood, ceramic, plaster, aluminium foil 
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Contrasting the sizes of houses, cats, and trees (the wood was sourced from the roadside in Tunis), Jie has created a fairytale scene of a culturalised yet wild nature. It is a poetic response to his experience of being in Tunis. In his imagination of this exotic environment, it is an inward-oriented process of expression, mixed with personal experiences and fantasies. Thus his works also take on the aura of traditional Chinese ink painting.
The Way, artist: Xiaoyan WU, material: ceramic 
Flowing Plates, artist: Xiaoyan WU, material: ceramic, plaster, rice paper
In contrast, Xiaoyan’s work is a faithful recreation of scenes she has encountered in Tunisian human society. Her observations are external and tend towards a quality of pure objectivity. Selecting as her models people she has encountered on the metro in Tunis – on journeys from La Marsa to the National Centre of Ceramic Art in Bab Sidi Kacem, where she made her works for this exhibition – each detail is perfectly composed to make the ephemeral, vanishing moments concrete and lasting. The fragile nature of the ceramic and the size of the figures mirrors the delicate and solitary nature of human lives.
Finally, the installation of plates is Xiaoyan’s experimental ceramic project, blending traditional Chinese blue and white glaze on a special kind of clay from Tunisia. The unexpected form of the outcomes, which is the product of testing the interplay of two media from different traditions, reflects the unpredictability of cultural exchange.
open studio 
oepn studio 
open studio, the artist is taking photos for her next project. 
open studio 
work in progress