Installation view of Shanshui: Echoes and Signals, 2024. Photo: Lok Cheng. Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong
NARRATOR:
Titled Black & White Mustard Seed Garden (Tale of the 11th Day Series), this ink painting was created by Yang Jiechang between 2009 and 2014 using ink and mineral pigments on silk. The work is around 2.8 metres high, 11.6 metres wide, and five centimetres thick. Displayed on the gallery wall, the work is about the height of a storey and as long as a double-decker bus.
The work consists of eight vertical panels forming a continuous canvas. The artist used black ink to depict in great detail a forest featuring trees, billowing clouds, mountain, rocks, humans, and animals like bears, monkeys, hippopotamuses, tigers, deer, geese, wolves, storks, and rats. The majority of the animals come in pairs, and are captured in different motions and poses.
Taking up the middle panels is the forest with its sprawling entanglement of tree roots and luxuriant foliage. A line of rolling clouds lingers in the treetops. On the left side of the canvas, a winding stream runs towards the bottom left and is flanked by overgrown banks. The right part of the canvas, which looks like a meadow or muddy ground, has more empty spaces than the rest of the painting. The edge of this landscape can be glimpsed on the top right, and it appears to be a cliff.
Over a hundred animals in pairs, triplets, or solo are dispersed among the rocks and trees. They seem to be roaming at leisure, resting on grass, copulating in the forest, or socialising by the stream. For example, in the panel on the left, geese and hippos play by the stream, while a monkey crosses the water on a tiger’s back. Humans and animals are also hidden in the thick forest of the middle panels. For example, a long-haired human bending forward appears to be copulating with a goat mounting on their back. In the periphery of the forest, a wolf lowers its head, drinking milk from a hippo’s teat.