Yingjie Cuomu’s Immediate Records of Tibet: Parents I, 2020
Yingjie Cuomu’s Immediate Records of Tibet: Parents series, 2020, oil pastel on paper, approx. 20 x 30 cm each
This series was made during Fang Ting Ting’s visit to Tibet in 2020. “Yingjie Cuomu” was the Tibetan name she used at the time and the name she signed these works with. When her parents experienced altitude sickness, she stayed at the hotel to care for them. She set aside her plans to paint in oils and used the oil pastels she had brought with her to record her parents in the rooms, on the rooftop terrace and in the restaurant. Swift lines capture their postures and weave through the surrounding furniture, windows, doorways and objects. Tibet’s strong sunlight and vivid surroundings encouraged her to use intense, unmixed colours, bringing their strength into these everyday moments.
Artist’s Note
At the time, I was practising Tibetan Buddhism and pursuing enlightenment within this lifetime. Religious practice occupied much of my life. It also allowed me to set aside, for a while, my expectations of how a painting should look or what it had to express.
While travelling, I could draw with oil pastels, take photographs on my phone, or stack stones outdoors without making any record of them. I felt no urgency to give meaning to what I saw. I simply recorded things as they appeared to me.
The oil pastels I had brought for colour studies became my main material while I stayed with my parents. I began to feel the force of vivid colours placed beside one another. My parents, the rooms and the views outside the windows could all become subjects. I needed no further reason to record them.
Yingjie Cuomu’s Immediate Records of Tibet: Parents II, 2020
Yingjie Cuomu’s Immediate Records of Tibet: Parents III, 2020
Yingjie Cuomu’s Immediate Records of Tibet: Parents V, VI, VII, 2020
