Paper cutting has historically been a part of communities throughout China. The art of paper cutting, or jianzhi, creates patterns that may symbolize the ideas of blessedness, luck and fortune or be representative the artists’ regional cultures.
Communities throughout China make paper cuttings as household decorations and for display during celebratory occasions. People typically hang them from doors and windows; and they may also use them as patterns for textile embroidery.
The artists participating in this program are from Shaanxi Province and represent the northern style, which is characterized by bold designs that contrast the fine and delicate lines of the southern style.
PRICES
Everyone: FREE
Friday, July 11, 2014
7:00PM – 10:00PM
Zone 5
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto Ontario
Saturday, July 12, 2014
12:00PM – 8:00PM
Zone 5
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto Ontario
Sunday, July 13, 2014
12:00PM – 6:00PM
Zone 5
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto Ontario
Tian Yali 田亚莉
Tian Yali is a paper cutter from Yijun county, Tongchuan city, Shaanxi Province. A versatile artist, she is proficient in many traditional crafts—including embroidery, painting, and making sachets and edible dough figurines for festivals. Raised in a farming family, her skills as a paper cutter were established locally by the age of twenty when she provided all the decorations for her brother’s wedding. When a 1980s government census of folk artists recognized her, she received training from the local culture bureau. Her work is considered representative of the rural culture of the Yellow River region—but she has also created innovative new styles and designs.
Gao Fenglian 高凤莲, Liu Jieqiong 刘洁琼, Fan Rongrong 樊蓉蓉
These women represent three-generations of a family’s long involvement in the paper cutting and embroidered patchwork traditions in Yanchuancounty, Shaanxi Province. Gao learned these crafts from her mother and grandmother, and in the mid-1930s, when the family could barely afford scraps of paper, the young Gao honed her craft by cutting leaves. Gao joined the Communist Party at age 14 and married two years later in 1951. Without a formal education and discouraged by her in-laws from working at the nearby embroidery factory, she nonetheless continued her craft in her village commune, where she later became Party Secretary. Even in the early days of China’s reform in the 1980s, when she had more time at her disposal, Gao balanced her artwork with her other duties tilling the land. Today she is formally recognized as a national-level Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritor, and her intricate paper cutting patterns are created with no prior sketching. At the Festival, she is joined by her youngest daughter (Liu Jieqiong) and granddaughter (Fan Rongrong). All three have led public demonstrations in universities and cultural centers in China, New Zealand, Germany, Israel and Switzerland.