Drawing Book

My father, Chang Qing 常青, couldn’t find his mic during a video call we had in 2012. So he wrote down what he wanted to say and held it towards the camera. He talked about the migration of culture: Buddhism traveled to China from the south, Marxism traveled to China from the west, and the methodology of drawing Sumiao 素描 that both my father and me were trained with, the foundation of Revolutionary Realism, traveled to China from the Soviet Union. I was traveling as well, and reexamining my cultural heritage with the newly obtained critical distance. My father tried to ease my anxiety by saying “Let go” in the end. I took screenshots of this conversation and later made them into a book (right booklet), accompanied by the other booklet which includes my remembrance of 10 principles of drawing that my father had taught me that I illustrated for. The two booklets share one cover and it folds into a cube, as the ultimate goal of such methodology is to render three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces.

self-published, signed and numbered edition of 3, 15 x 15 x 15 cm, 2012