-005 Yang Shuai
If there is one thing that you can change in a previous project of yours, what would it be?
If I could change one thing in a previous project, it would be my decision to prematurely finalize the format of the Countable Me series. In those works, I adhered layered vellum paintings to canvas—an act that now feels too fixed.
I could have allowed the vellum to hang freely on the wall, letting string measurements map directly onto architectural features. These strings could have been pinned, suspended, or taped; their tensions loosened or tightened; their lines extended from wall to floor. Painting marks could have escaped the image frame entirely. Had I allowed myself to continue this line of experimentation, the central idea—that my body is a measurement—could have emerged more clearly through a performative and spatial relationship between the image and the surrounding architecture.
This hesitation reflects a self-historical challenge I have been reckoning with: the tension between the momentum of making, the voice of the work, and the method of voicing. Sometimes, the sensual and emotional pleasure of making seduces me into overproduction. I have now seen this tendency in myself since college. When I made large installations from paper dolls and their residue, the decision not to separately understand the matrix and its leftovers was lazy. I was technically fluent, but that fluency at some moment muted the inner necessity of certain decisions. I was subjected to the pleasure of process and its visible results—what I now recognize as a kind of narcissism of making.
Looking back, this tendency reflects more than a technical issue—it parallels how hard I withhold memory of the past and reveals a lack of courage to be fully present. To be submerged in the act of making without inspecting its meaning is to risk creating artworks that no longer carry art. I now ask myself: Am I making something because I can, or because I must?
In the past year, I’ve become more deliberate in distinguishing art, artwork, and the artist. I now think of art-making not as a manifestation of ability, but as a response to necessity. This necessity must account for the presence of Others, for the social and timely dimensions of the world that the artwork lives with. The responsibility of art-making lies not only in invention, but also in restraint.
If I were to revisit Countable Me, I would let the work remain in process longer, let the painted vellum sheets meet the wall, the floor, the room. I would allow time for the architecture to speak back, and for performative space to flow, as much as they were in the studio. I would shift from asserting presence to listening, to allow art to give birth to work. After all, if artwork is made to be in exhibitions, then we will have exhibitions that make artwork, and artwork that sadly doesn’t say enough about art.
Part of the installation of the exhibition At-Will Adaptation which includes Countable Me, n+1, and Centerless Energy, September 2024
Part of the studio before the painted vellum was fully fixed on canvases, April 2024
Womb II, Festive paper, March 2019
Womb III, Silkscreen, oil, tea, and gouache on paper, November 2019
shuaiyangstudio.com
Images courtesy of the artist.
\