Ma Qiusha

Fog No. 6, 2012

The artistic techniques Ma Qiusha uses, speak of an interplay of the up-to-date and here-and-now, and the retrospective view, of the present and the past. This quality also penetrates into the content of her artworks. The artist consciously refers to her own past in plenty of her artworks, making memories the subject of her artistic thought process. All of her artworks are pervaded by the theme of sharpness: this is a reference to Ma Quisha’s relationship to her family, and also to the urban environment of Beijing. The trace of this can also be seen in the content of the artwork Fog No. 6, which was created in 2012. This large, framed watercolor picture has a deep scratch running almost diagonally across it. This scratch looks almost like the track of a tear, running across the darker, colored background. This artwork should be read very much in relation to the video artwork All my sharpness comes from your hardness, 2011: it is an abstract manifestation of a trace left behind by a roller skate blade on asphalt. Aside from the strong visual quality of Fog No. 6, which puts one in mind of Lucio Fontana’s minimalist artworks, this artwork is inscribed with an intense emotional and psychological language.