Anne of Carversville

I’ve always loved “womanly crafts”, especially taken to the level of high art. Minutes after opening my dear friend Pakhing Kan’s winter 2008 invite to her Beijing show of small ceramic boxes, I saw a photo of Li Xiaofeng’s “Beijing Memory” dress.

Li Xiaofeng’s (or Li Xiao Feng) stupendously beautiful ceramic dresses defy descriptive words, and I won’t waste our time searching for them.

Li Xiaofeng’s sculptures remind me of a widely read Anne of Carversville post Modern Asia|Restrained Beauty Without Ties That Bind.

Not quite as popular today — with the passing of the featured 2008 Pirelli Calendar shot in China — both Li Xiaofeng and photographer Patrick Demarchelier for Pirelli explore a controlled modest but beautiful physicality, anchored in antiquity.

In his June 2010 interview with Yatzer, Li Xiaofeng describes the context of his work and his search for materials used in his sculptures:

My first idea for the work was that it should be able to be worn for performance art. From 2004 to 2005, I have done performance art several times. This performance art pieces are related to the human body and its ideal. My first piece using ceramic shards was a Mao jacket. The name of the piece was “Beijing Memories”. My idea was to distill this era to a new level through art.

As to how I found these shards, everybody knows that Beijing is a big city. Beijing today is a big construction site. Property developers have turned Beijing upside down. Ancient cultural relics from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties have been pushed up from below the surface through this process.

Modern Day Lacoste China Inspiration

An exciting new Li Xiaofeng project for Lacoste reminds us that his teacup shards sculptures are designed for men, too.  There’s not so much restrained beauty in a Lacoste polo shirt as the Pirelli Calendar. Other challenges were the same: how does an artist honor traditions in a contemporary way?

In fact, the single precious polo shirt sculpture Li Xiafeng created for the Lacosts project is restraining in its design and construction. 

China forbids the export of ancient artefacts including porcelain shards, so for the Porcelain Polo art work, Li decided to use new shards, recreated with ancient symbolism so that the piece could eventually be shipped out of the country. Note that the word Lacoste isn’t part of ancient Chinese artifacts. 

Inspired by the early Ming Dynasty (1368 -1644 AD), the artist painted porcelain bowls with images of a scholar contemplating a scenic landscape surrounded by what is referred to as the ‘Four Gentlemen’ in classical Chinese painting, namely an orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum and plum blossom. Read more details at Yatzer. 

Li Xiaofeng’s precious polo shirts for LacosteThere are many babies in the limited edition of 20,000 printed polo design. Li Xiaofeng chose blue and white shards with lotus and children designs from the Kangxi Period (1662-1772 AD) of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD). The lotus symbolizes purity and rebirth, reflecting the reality of a high infant mortality rate during the period. People incorporated pictures of babies into decorated ceramics, with hope they would be rich with children.  Read more of the story at Yatzer.  See more photos of Li Xiaofeng’s work at Hong Art.