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Ping Chong
How many centuries
did she stand at attention accompanying her lord to the netherworld in
the blackness of royal tomb? Under what circumstances did the light of
day blind her and then reveal to her the sights and smells of a China
irrevocably changed? When did she, a humble personage, never intended
as an objet d'art become an objet d'art? Why does the visible evidence
of time wrought on her being, the discoloration, the chips and cracks
move us so? Is it because she reminds us of the endless suffering of the
Chinese poor and by extension the poor of the world who continue to be
exploited by the rich and powerful? In her erect quietude we feel her
stoicism, her forbearance, her eternal dignity in an essentially unjust
world.
Yong Soo Min
I
am powerfully drawn to her. She compels me to empathize with her. I identify
with her broad, flat, simply defined face and flat feet. The irregular patch
of redness around her face along with the marred and dirtied surface enhance
the sense of pathos that she engenders, given the emotional and social damage
derived from her station in life. She stands tentatively though with such
rigidity in the slim hips, as if to render herself so self-contained, self-restrained,
and diminutive, lest she take up any unwarranted space. And although she
appears quite vulnerable in all her exposed humility and servitude, she
nevertheless commands the kind of honor and dignity of someone who has nothing
left to lose.
I feel eternal gratitude to the anonymous artist who fashioned her with
such honesty, compassion, and conviction. It's a seemingly simple and stylized
portrait with such economy of line and form yet it conveys a powerful sense
of individuality, of an actual person in all her complexity.
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North China