12 spaces/places

Yuhuan Zhang
Sumi ink on paper, 2020

In 12 spaces/places, I explore the materiality of sumi ink and the ways light and shadow shape our experience of space. Working with a pen nib, I build spaces from meticulously placed dots. Depth emerges through successive layers of marks and varying proportions of water and ink. These variations in density and tone remind me of shadows moving across objects throughout the day: how they deepen or flatten a space, alter its mood, and shape our relationship to it.

These drawings bring me back to the spaces I made as a child. Growing up in China in the 1970s, I had no toys made specifically for play. My mother worked in the pharmacy of the largest hospital in southwest China, which received imported Western medicines. Their packaging became my toys: blue, grey, and white boxes and tins covered in Roman letters I could not understand. I loved playing with them.

While my mother was at work, I stayed alone, locked inside our one-room, dormitory-style home. Its single window faced northwest. Outside stood a large tree whose branches broke up and filtered the sunlight entering the room. I would sit on a small stool beneath the window, using a taller stool as a desk. On its surface, I placed a few boxes to observe, arrange, and deconstruct. Hours passed in uninterrupted pleasure. My attention belonged entirely to the spaces I could create: large or small, deep or shallow, nested or flattened.

In making these drawings, I return to that attentive state, to a sense of complete contentment and purity. The slow accumulation of ink feels like making time. With each mark, I watch a space unfold. I am back on that little stool, watching light play across the boxes and construct spaces before me. In that moment, time and space intersect, and there is no separation between me and the shadow.