Multimedia artist melds ancient with cutting-edge
Released: April 1, 2004
In the complex, emerging field of multimedia, assistant professor Xiaohong Zhang is adept at using electronic equipment to communicate artfully. Yet she also derives great satisfaction in the ancient art form of Chinese paper cutting.
This summer, thanks to a development grant from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, she gets a chance to meld her passions for the very old and the very new.
Zhang will travel to China with her digital equipment to shoot a movie that depicts how local people have created paper cuttings for centuries. She wants to record this traditional fine art before it’s gone from Chinese culture.
“Paper cutting is a folk art and it is female. Housewives make paper cuttings to decorate a window or door,” Zhang said. “Unfortunately, this special art is fading out.”
Although today’s paper cuttings are chiefly used as decorations or given as presents, as early as the 6th century paper cuttings were often symbolic and used in rituals for sacrificial offerings to the ancestors and gods. It used to be the one craft that every girl was to master and was often used to judge brides. Either scissors or a knife are the tools of choice.
Zhang is thrilled to use her cutting edge technical skills to record the history and process of an ancient art she is passionate about. The resulting DVD movie will serve as a teaching tool in her motion media and interactive multimedia classes. She also teaches Web site design. “Multimedia has two approaches, commercial and fine art,” Zhang said. “I do both.”
Zhang grew up in China, the daughter of a math teacher and a computer technician. She always liked to draw, but her parents and teachers did not appreciate her unconventional sketchings. Still, she was able to follow her heart and pursue a degree in art, first in Beijing where she studied drawing, watercolor and graphic design and then at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale for her Masters of Fine Arts degree. Zhang came to UW-Whitewater in the fall of 2002.
“My paper cuttings are my own personal style. I borrow from the old media to make new,” said Zhang, who uses an Exacto knife along with a scanner and computer. “Like Picasso. People considered his work contemporary, but he was influenced by old African art.”
One of her favorite paper cuttings is called “My Family.” It depicts a man furiously working at a computer while a woman stands with her hands turned upward in a very full and cluttered room. Every detail, from hangers of clothes in the closet to the muscles in the man’s back, is intricately cut into the paper.
Her work has been displayed in over 30 shows in places as far away as Canada, Japan, Scotland, California and Philadelphia. Six pieces will be shown in Madison as soon as her life-sized pictures are framed, which is no small task.
- Jane Provorse,provorsj@uww.edu
