We usually have conventional impressions of artists today: too edgy to be mainstream, too weird to be understood, too aloof to be identifiable. Female painter Yao Momo, however, conforms to none of these stereotypes. The day we meet the Guangzhou native, she wears everyday jeans, her hair casually tied in a ponytail, just like the girl next door. “The weirdest part of me is being not weird at all. I am just too normal,” she says, speaking in soft tones.
Eileen Chang once said, “Get famous as early as possible.” Yao has put this remark into practice. Her name came to public attention when she published her first picture album in 2000 – the year she turned 13. The book contains scenery sketches she drew during trips to France, Holland, Germany and Italy. Short texts of her thoughts on things she saw and experienced accompany each drawing. No fancy colors are used. No dazzling skills are paraded. No abstract concepts are injected. Lines and shadows build up the world in her eyes, simple, transparent – and “moist,” as she then described her work, an oblique reference to the loosening up of the mind in a hot spring.
Painting was a childhood habit to Yao. “With everyone appreciating what you draw, it is simply natural to continue. In contrast to what others presumed, I drew without many deep thoughts. It was done unconsciously I reckon.” Inspiration often came from books she read at that time, especially Alice in Wonderland, her all-time favorite. In her early works, the lives of happy and innocent girls were a recurring motif.
Yet neither praise nor habit prompted Yao to go to professional fine art college. Instead, she undertook a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. “Skills are important. But equally important is to know what to express through paintings,” she explains. Deeply influenced by her axiology course, Yao expanded the themes of her oeuvre to include selfness and emotion. Hints of maturity can be traced in her first solo exhibition, Plena’s Art Field, held in 2009 at Sun Yat-sen University. Her former female figures with their carefree attitudes were replaced by women with worries and contradictory feelings, eager to explore the wider world on the one hand but afraid of getting hurt on the other.
Yao later pursued her postgraduate degree in fine arts at San Francisco Art Institute, a time-honored educational establishment and probably the most hippie art college in 1970s America. The first thing that shocked her was not the cultural differences from China, but the freedom the students there enjoyed in expressing themselves.
“I had a class called Critical Seminar back then,” she recalls. “A group of 15 students were gathered to evaluate works presented by one of the group members. I received some really harsh comments at the beginning, as they thought I put too much emphasis on the form rather than my own feelings. Art is just a carrier of certain sentiments. That’s lesson number one, which is usually neglected in China’s fine art education.”
Yao would not call herself a feminist, even though nine out of 10 times her pieces are about women. Her graduation work was a picture series featuring wedding dresses. This time, no concrete personage appeared – just half-made dresses and, sometimes, a pair of hands mending the fabric. The whole idea was inspired by a visit to a wedding dress factory in Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. Yao witnessed female employees working day and night to mend wedding gowns for brides in Europe and America. “They have no idea how their work will be used,” she says. “This saddens me most.”
Before leaving the States, Yao received the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards, and was elected as one of the representatives of West America’s new-age artists. Her works were also placed on display at museums in San Francisco.
Instead of paving her way towards becoming a more sophisticated painter, however, she chose to return to China and become a teacher in a vocational school in Foshan. “To be a full-time artist is extravagant. At this age, I have to be financially independent. My job guarantees a stable salary and spare time, which I may take advantage of to paint,” she explains.
Just like most of the post-80s generation in the country, Yao has put aside her dreams and ambitions momentarily to focus on practicality – but not entirely. Last year, she became a member of the Guangdong Artists Association. A joint exhibition, Ineffable Puzzle, displayed some of her works at Goelia 225 in November.
Currently, she is negotiating with her ex-school mates on a cross-continent art project. “My works are neither cynical nor profound. They are gentle and sincere,” she says. Just like the painter herself.
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