Julie McNiel Arts
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CHINA Past and Present
Gualala Art Center, Gualala, California
Group Exhibition April 2008
Confluence, gouache and ink on wood, copyright Julie McNiel, 2008
"Confluence" is a painting about the intersection between two cultures, a personal story, and an actual place: the Chinese city
of Chongqing. Chongqing is located at the confluence of two rivers, the Chiang Jiang (Yangtze) and the Jialing Jiang.
Downriver from the famous Three Gorges, it is considered one of China's largest cities. It is to this city that I traveled,
for the purpose of adopting my baby daughter, Fu Ai Feng, from an orphanage.
Adoption of Chinese girls in the tens of thousands by foreigners, has been a social phenomenon
and controversial issue for those involved. China's One Child Policy was put into place decades ago, to curb population growth.
Due to this law, as well as the complexities of economics and tradition, millions of baby girls
have disappeared, undocumented. Abandonment of Chinese girls escalated, and led to the media's depiction
of this generation as "China's Lost Girls".
The iconography in "Confluence" includes the city, its two rivers, and a flow of small children into the painting's foreground.
Here, one of them is caught up by adoptive parents, while the rest disappear downriver. The Moon Lady of Chinese myth
watches over the landscape, while clutching one of the Lost Girls. Another is asleep in a cardboard box,
to be left on a doorstep by birth parents that do not want, or can't, keep her.
In the fanciful cartouche behind the Moon Lady, pink mooncakes float away, to vanish across
the smoggy sky.
In "Ten Suns One Daughter", the Moon Lady is again a character on the painting's stage, this time peeking through a sky filled
with suns pierced by arrows. In the traditional tale, re-told through the centuries, the ten suns rested in a mystical tree within which lived
the magical Jun-Ravens. The birds carried the suns each day on their individual journeys through the sky.
However, for reasons unknown,. all ten suns appeared in the sky at once, causing a blazing drought. The earth was
saved by Yi, a great bowman, who shot nine of the ten suns down. Later in this tale, Yi marries Chang E. She consumes
the elixir of immortality, and is cursed to live her life on the moon for all eternity. Her cool light shines through the darkness, guiding
wayward travellers.
Additional Paintings in CHINA series