Bao Pei, interview | Peking University, Beijing | 27 May 2018

Bao Pei uses ink and paper in the tradition of Chinese ink painting, but makes her work abstract, and uses knives instead of brushes because she believes the delivery of the ink, the markings, are more forceful that way, conveying greater emotional depth and range.
She talks about the void in her work as a visualisation of space-time and existential in content. An empty chair in one of her paintings might symbolise that which has yet to occur as well as that which has already past, she says, a metaphor for the human condition as one of perpetual change, of constant becoming, being.
She also seems to say that something is gained but more certainly, something is lost.
Intersection: International Art and Culture, Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, Beijing 27 May – 27 August 2018
Interview by LILLY WEI
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY