Odes
For a year in his mid-twenties, the photographer Taca Sui dedicated himself to the study of China’s most ancient poetry collection, The Book of Odes (Shijing). Inspired by the poems, which have long been considered a window into early Chinese civilization, Sui took a series of photographs in northern China, in the regions eulogized in the Shijing, which he then arranged into albums. Sui’s photographs follow the suggestive, elliptical nature of the poems: the images seem to hover on a pregnant pause or a strange moment of coincidence. Sui draws in equal measure on modern artists’ books and Chinese albums, creating a new hybrid form of contemporary art.
Artwork Details
- 當代 塔可 詩山河考 攝影
- Title: Odes
- Artist: Taca Sui (Chinese, born 1984)
- Date: 2014
- Culture: China
- Medium: 108 silver gelatin prints mounted in 9 albums
- Dimensions: Image (each): 3 7/8 × 3 7/8 in. (9.8 × 9.8 cm)
Page (each): 11 1/4 × 6 7/8 in. (28.6 × 17.5 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Friends of Asian Art Gifts, 2014
- Object Number: 2014.220a–j
- Rights and Reproduction: © Taca Sui
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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