Comparing toWatching Shooting Stars with You,My Cow Kingdomand other works done in 2005 and 2006, one can see some apparent changes made in Han Yajuan’s work from this year. These works showed a transition from describing a little girl’s pursuit of romance, to focusing on today’s more realistic issues, the artist has shown a refined process of a girl’s gradual maturation.
Becoming independent in one’s twenties, the age of choices, faced with all kinds of possibilities, with all sorts of big and small questions to explore one’s inner world, to learn and know oneself. It is the beginning of establish the idea of the “self”, many people would spend many years or even their entire life to explore the question of "self", for instance, "who am I", "What do I like?", "What do I want?", "What is my view on life?" and such. They sometimes consciously pose these questions, but most of time is subconsciously making a choice dealing with particular matters. Han Yajuan is in this period, and her works clearly unveils her thoughts, portraying young people of this age, who were born in the 1980's grew up in a consumers' era, their tender care of themselves at heart, and secretively plans a wonderful life of the future.
For exampleDateportrays young girls before going on a date, indecisive on choosing clothes, she is perhaps asking herself, with which look show I show up?Perhaps Singleyou can see a girl’s self-confidence and her doubts on marriage.Good Life’s attitude towards consumption reflects her view on life and value.
We use the titleBeautiful Planas the title of her solo exhibition, with the meaning of “secrecy” and “wonder”, because their questions were all posed secretively to themselves, and their hopes and planning for the future are all sweet. Also for this reason, we installed the exhibition hall as a dark space, with a video work perpendicular from the ceiling to the group, adding twinkling lights to the space, adding element of mystery to a gloomy darkness. We bring the audience to a girl’s world of questions, in this dark space there are over ten oil paintings hung, different lights projects on different works at different times, unlike other exhibitions where the viewers look at the artworks at their will, but to look at different paints as they become lit – they are small secrets from the bottom of her heart.
