Ying Ying. Wind of Okhotsk Automatic translate

Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition of Chinese photographer Ying Ying, who traveled around the island of Hokkaido on the Okhotsk Wind train and reflected the snowy silence in her works

Chinese woman Ying Ying, like any travel photographer, finds it difficult to ignore the flocks of smiling children, colorful old people with sad eyes and decaying buildings adjacent to skyscrapers. She photographed Asian bazaars, high-rise buildings in New York, and quite traditional views with cherry blossoms, but the artist became famous for her series of quiet landscapes covered with snow, in which we see Japan as far away from the lights of Ginza as possible. Travel photographers also have their favorite routes. For example, Europeans consider it a matter of honor to conquer the Trans-Siberian Railway in a reserved seat carriage. Ying Ying, who was born in a region where snow rarely falls, did not dare to do this, but found a completely extreme route for herself. In 2015, she made the first snow tour across the island of Hokkaido from Sapporo to Abashiri on the beautifully named “Wind of Okhotsk” train.

In her lens were fragments of reality framed by an ideal shining emptiness. Prosaic outbuildings - some kind of sheds, small shops and vans, seeming like toys in the bosom of a fantastic white landscape, where the gaze of a European viewer helplessly searches for the horizon line, acquire metaphysical pathos in Ying Ying’s landscapes.

In Chinese painting, namely in scrolls where a certain narrative unfolds, there are often unusual compositional solutions: mountains, trees and buildings float in space, and characters can be implausibly small - or, on the contrary, large. Ying Ying, pursuing the effect of a watercolor drawing on the white plane of the sheet, perhaps unconsciously moves away from a realistic linear perspective. As in medieval scrolls, eternal mythological stories of man’s struggle with the elements and life “in spite of” are played out on the provincial streets of Japan. Here are women carrying bags of groceries somewhere into a shining other existence, but here is a girl who went outside to play and found herself in the space between heaven and earth.

The more intense the white, the brighter the faded advertising sign or the blue roof of the home, like mosque tiles. These are a kind of “ideas” of things that allow you to feel the intensity of life. This is a report from a metaphysical journey, the purpose of which is not to describe the life and customs of a remote place, but the very idea of ​​​​the flow of life. Cyclic dying and birth, repeating annually. And even if a modern viewer does not discern the charms of a watercolor painting in these photographs, but sees poorly loaded textures of an surreal digital landscape, this will indicate that the Ying Ying series hits the nerve of reality. Both in reality and on the monitor, worlds appear and disappear before our eyes. Ying Ying’s photographs are evidence of this process.

about the author

Ying Ying was born in Shanghai (PRC), and currently lives and works in Japan. The photographer spent her childhood in an old mansion within the boundaries of a densely populated metropolis, which explains her interest in historical heritage and architecture. During her travels, Ying Ying explores the less obvious aspects of city life, trying to express the invisible connection between people and architectural objects. The reality in her emotionally rich photographs goes beyond the boundaries of the usual and plunges into a surreal context.