A Guide to Daydreams

By Wu Jian’an

A story about the paper-cut figures

Before I start to talk about this series of works, I want first to tell a story, a story about me and the paper-cut figures.

In the spring of 2003, SARS broke out in Beijing. It is the kind of virus that can penetrate your lungs when you take a breath, and soon kill you. Scared of going outside, I stayed in my apartment alone and rarely opened my windows – worrying that the black, dancing monsters would get into the room. To me, the air was gloomy and foul. Every breath brought to me some kind of frightening association. Strange illusions pop easily into a person’s mind when it is in such a hypersensitive state. In this enclosed room, some things became unreal, but others showed me how I might transform my fears. I realized that I urgently needed a companion for my innermost being, in order to dispel my feelings of oppression and fear and to help me face the tangible crisis with a positive attitude.

One afternoon, for some unknown reasons, or perhaps because I needed to find something to do in order to fill the dull hours dominated by SARS (I did not feel like sleeping or eating), I picked up a pair of scissors, sat on the floor, and started to cut some paper figures. I made them with extreme care and very slowly. By sunset, a palm-sized zhuaji doll appeared in my hand. It looked very “folk-like,” with a blooming flower on the top of its head, bathed in the light of sunset, and smiling at me with an open mouth. I suddenly saw my face reflected in his – something was changing – the fear in his face was disappearing and a calm courage slowly returned and permeated its face. A sense of safety, which I rarely experienced in my paintings, filled the room. It felt secure and warm. Inside this room, which was slowly turning dark, I sat on the floor and laughed. I was so relieved that I laughed out loud. With no hesitation, the laughter dispelled the fear from my mind. I finally realized that in fact I was not afraid. The inner companion that I had created for myself taught me this hidden truth.

In the following days during SARS, although I was still reluctant to leave my room, I felt that I had become stronger and that a friend was by my side. I made more smiling paper-cut figures of the same size. I placed them around me and the room seemed alive.

It is as if they were my doubles. To be more precise, they were the manifestation of a positive attitude, and together we were on guard against the virus. No matter whether it was day or night, they were always smiling. Sometimes, I just sat quietly across from them for a couple of hours and communicated with them silently. Then I would use my scissors to provide them with new companions. It was a very special sensation of creation – I separated part of my spirit, gave forms to it, and then communicated with the forms face to face.

After SARS, friends walked into my room. Yes, they said, you look very healthy, and not only physically.

The dissection of my mind

After SARS, I reached some kind of magic harmony with paper-cuts. Paper-cut can not only help me to detach a positive attitude from ambiguous thoughts and concretize it, but also reveal and display in depth other parts of my mind. It enables me to take care of my spirit, as if looking at a mirror, in order to check if it remains healthy or is in need of nutrition for the purpose of preventing any contagious disease created by society.

The works exhibited here were created in a relatively short period of time, between November 2003 and January 2004. I systematically dissected my mind, as if to reveal everything inside and hang up the contents to expose them to the sun. A monologue concerning my feelings, thoughts and memories, and even my political position was made into paper-cuts. Some works were created this way. They are in fact the products of a creative method – my own experiences as an individual were reflected in visual images through the filter of my mind. Some other works are completely new creations, based on my own reading of images that emerged from the innermost depths of my mind. They can be considered as dissections of my creative mind or corrective interpretations and so can function as psychological cures.

If these works were the result of the check-up of my mind between 2003 and 2004, I think the conclusion should be that I was healthy at that time.

Laughter

I think that what people see in artworks are in fact the stories embedded in the works: memories, imagination, fables, feelings of despair, pain in the heart and bitter tears in the eyes. Thus, in order to create meaningful works of art one needs to keep away from a narrow aesthetic approach and to throw away all conventions and stereotypes. One needs to respect curiosity, to learn from the unknown, to befriend all the extremes and the ugly, and to share happiness with crazy fools.

I imbue every work I make with laughter, a kind of laughter with no worries. It is not a result but a process. When laughter fills the heart, all worries and anxieties will become part of the past. This is the real happiness that characterizes every paper-cut I make.

Symbols

I invented many symbolic forms in this series and used them repeatedly. These elements are the basic vocabulary I employed when describing my mind. Here are some examples:

◎ Stretched limbs and flowers symbolize the energy of life

◎ Bent limbs symbolize oppression and constraint

◎ Quiet birds symbolize wisdom

◎ Arms pointing in certain directions symbolize confidence and power Creatures with a human head and a snake body or with a long tail symbolize traditional culture

Monkeys symbolize me

Some records of the making process (excerpts from my diaries written in January 2004)

I painted with a lot of difficulty. Sometimes I do not know at all what I am doing – every line needed to be painted three or five times. I painted and erased, and then erased and painted, sometimes more than ten times in order to achieve absolute smoothness. I do not know why I had to do it this way, but if I had not, I would not have felt comfortable, as if I had done something wrong. Then I had to redo it. I think I wasted a lot of time this way. I kept sharpening pencils in order to make my lines thin and wiry. The beginning of each work was exciting and I fearlessly added new elements as they came to my mind. However each invention created countless new problems for drawing and cutting. Not one element can be deleted, I know this very well. (January 1, 2004)

To paint slowly, in order to make every single line smooth with no defects. My mind is blank and the louder the music the better. I like this beat or I am already used to it. On a piece of glass, a knife quietly cuts the rice paper. Like surgery, I must do it very carefully, because the edge of a knife quickly becomes dull and will break the thin lines. (January 10, 2005)

I am damn tired, so tired that I want to laugh. Every part of my body is full of energy, except my right hand, which can barely hold a knife. I just want to see the finished works as soon as possible. I am not greedy, right? To torture whom?

My stomach is getting worse and worse, maybe because I was concentrating and was very tense when I was cutting. Some people say that paper-cut is of “cold” quality (liang), having too much yin. To use a knife to cut paper is even colder. A cold stomach will easily lead to gastric ulcer. I don’t believe it. It’d better not be true. (January 20, 2004)

Daydream

An exhibition has to have a title.

To exhibit these works as a series, the most fitting name perhaps should be “A Report on Spiritual Hygiene.” However, the “report” is only presented by me, so it seems somewhat vulnerable to the accusation of exhibitionism, suggesting that I want to show my most private thoughts to others. This is dumb. To think about it in another way, it may be better to find a more appealing name that relates to the works vaguely but not so as to irritate anybody. Let me call it Daydreams then.

Those who know the circumstances of the creation of these works can interpret daydreams as a subject for psychological analysis, reflecting the content of the exhibition.

For those who have not read the explanation, they can think that a daydreamer is playing games and has filled the paper with a wild assortment of fantastic images.

As for myself, I want to become the dissection of my spirit. I want to make people hear the laughter in the images. These may be daydreams.