artistes shanghaiens #1 - Nini Sum
De Shanghai, j’ai ramené 400 grammes de thé Oolong, des montres Mao, une lampe en forme de touche de clavier, un calendrier en Lego, des bonnets avec des oreilles. En fait, j’en ai eu pour 150 euros d’excédent de bagage (après négociation). Et désormais, j’ai dans la tête quelques mots en mandarin et de nouveaux noms d’artistes cool.
J’ai choisi de parler de trois d’entre eux. J’ai eu l’occasion de poser quelques questions aux deux premières. J’ai vu le travail du troisième lors de la première Shanghai Photographer Night du Dada (concept intéressant puisque les artistes choississent eux-mêmes la musique sur laquelle leurs photos défilent).
# 1 - NINI SUM
Nini Sum fait tout un tas de choses : dessin, peinture, sculture, design, album art,… Elle est sympa et presque tous ses trucs sont mortels. J’aime ses petits bonhommes aux capuches et aux nez pointus, j’adore ses portraits et je porterais bien les tees qu’elle conçoit dans le cadre d’IdleBeats.
“I like portraits, either drawing or photographing. I take pictures of my friends and strangers in streets, sometimes discover nice portrait photographs online. Once there’s one which catches my eyes and makes me feel something -it’s really hard to describe- like a switcher being turned on, then I’ll know that I gotta draw that one down.”
“Generally I like working at night when it’s all dark and quiet, tea and coffee are good companies. It’s like jumping into a fish ball, you can freely wonder around if it’s deep enough.”
Influences :
“Music and movies, plants and bugs, vintages and handmade stuff.”
Influence of Chinese culture :
“Ancient Chinese ghost stories and witchcraft.”
Strangest thing ever seen :
“My grandpa sitting in an old bamboo chair by the gate of the alley when I came back from school. He passed away when I was one.”
About IdleBeats :
“IdleBeats is a screen printing studio that creates original, handmade t-shirts & prints in limited editions. We might be the first studio making screen printed art prints in Shanghai, we are going to do events and workshops to promote the screen printing culture, but also cool artists.”
About NeochaEDGE :
“NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China. They are not only promoters or curators but also friends of lots young Chinese creatives, they organize cool events as well. Shanghai would be less creative and fun without them.”
About Shanghai’s cultural scene :
“New things are growing so fast and crazily, more and more screens and radiations. Looks like a science fiction movie.”
Projects :
“I m currently working on a painting series called TreeMan - it’s acrylic and oil paintings on 4cm thick tree trunks. The eye of the trunk cross-section is also the eye of the tree man, and when you view it at an angle, the outer rings look like they are radiating from the eye. The body / flesh of the tree-man preserves the original color of the wood with only light painting – the tree man is actually the real tree.”
“I have also been working on a David Lynch portrait print for IdleBeats.”
“In the future, I hope to spend more time on making figures and small scale sculpture sets, it would also be cool to do some album art projects.”
