In progress
Jennifer and Grandpa Qian in her hometown in 1993
spice at home
spice at home
Artist Statement and Intent
Born and raised in urban China then immigrated to Las Vegas at age of 16, Jennifer Jiaying Qian experienced education, art, culture and community change during her journey where she experienced and embraced challenges and opportunities.
Qian is considered a multidisciplinary artist and scientist - she pursued undergrad in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Information Science with focus on Human Computer Interaction. Growing up with rigorous science and math curriculum, Jennifer loves to indulge in dance, painting, and playing with various forms of medium when it comes to art. Currently Jennifer is a master student focus on art and data science at New York University. In her recent art work experiments, she combines the concept of math and science like time, kinetic energy into visual art form. During her art creation process, Jennifer also focus on documentation of the end to end iteration; valuable footage will then contribute to the final output of the project.
Qian enjoys organizing community driven events where she co-led large scale Chinese cooking events (20+ participants) before pandemic and most recently a mix-media experimental project for the 2021 Lunar New Year. She believes one of the best way to empower harmony and diversity in various communities is to empathize through lens of culture. Immigrant culture is well enjoyed through various medium of art and food which will be Qian's focus for this fellowship program. She has been benefiting during her residency in New York City in the past 6 years where she visited many artist studios and exhibitions in her neighborhoods where she met emerging artists and learned about their stories. Most recently her creative work was positively impacted by her visit to the West Village studio space where she learned about artist's intent behind the creative process and pushed Qian's research on quantitative analysis on creative impact upon artists. The research area is considered untapped and challenging by academia and industry mentors, but Qian is excited to connect with artist community through programs to further her contribution to the art and science future. Qian is excited to apply for the Immigrant Artist Fellowship as she has been conducting many art experiments focus on immigrant art and culture and she believes that this Fellowship will accelerate her production and message to the community. Qian is also very strong in public speaking and event planning and she will help further strengthen community awareness through curated programs, documentary, presentations and social media.
The 3 key message of the project
1. Art is approachable
2. Art embraces culture and community
3. Art can be made of anything
Final Work Proposal and Practice/Media/Processes
The project is named "Five Spice of Immigrant Art and Culture". Five spice is commonly known as an every-day in cooking powder in Chinese and Vietnamese cruise, which commonly includes a spice mixture of five or more spices. The five flavors of the spices include sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami refers to the five traditional cooking elements. Inspired by the foundations of the five elements, the project seeks the exploration of foundational elements in various if not most immigrant art and culture. In each unique immigrant artist's journey and experience, there are shared crucial core values that spirits which Jennifer is looking to highlight. This project is truly experimental and multidisciplinary as Jennifer attempts to use cooking spices, condiments and colored liquors to create painting and sculpture.
The proposed final collection output of the project will include 5 large scale paintings: "melting pot" - painting that represent harmony and diversity across communities in the US. Four other paintings will each represent a culture that through Jennifer's unique lens, often through interaction with her friends and other key members that represent the selected immigrant culture. Preliminary painting names are: Dan Dan Noodles, Pav bhaji, Maultaschen, and Manoush. These painting will includes key color and texture that represents the culture and dish. The idea is to not fully paint the dish but use the elements to draw awareness to various culture.
Final output Inspiration and Mood Board
1. Dan Dan Noodles
2. Pav bhaji
3. Maultaschen
4. Manoush
During the full three months of residency, Jennifer will be making creative progress in the studio space producing layers of painting using spices from various culture - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Italian, German, French, Middle Eastern, Ghana etc. Ingredients and materials of the project will be culinary safe, non-hazardous studio friendly so studio visitors and community program participants will be in fully safe environment to view the art creation process. The creative process will also be documented using time-laspse and slow motion via go-pro so the video footage can be edited into documentary for the full Artist Fellowship program.
The Solo Exhibition will includes the five paintings that Jennifer creates in the studio and can possibly include her other creative output relates to the theme. As Jennifer prepares for her exhibition for New York University Gallatin Art Festival, she is creating sculptures preserving food in equilibrium using food acquired from small business restaurants throughout New York City. Each of her sculpture is accompanied by unique stories behind the creation of the food object told by the chef. The format of the Solo Exhibition is flexible and scalable as the project are multi-media and some of the painting and sculpture may be presented with video footage or audio interview recordings.
Studio Space Visit and Analysis
I was able to make a trip to Upper east side to view the space in person from the sidewalk. I see the space as challenge and great potential.
Challenge: The scaffolding is hiding the window and since the studio is North facing there is not direct sunlight in the afternoon. Additional lighting and interactive window immersive experience ensure capturing foot traffic to the space and the art work.
Opportunity: The space is large and high ceiling which allows multi-dimension and large scale creation of the art work. As the work is being created, I would like to actively provide "cooking activity" in a form of art creation/painting with spice to showcase the artist updates. We can also leverage social media and RSVP and generate more interests in the program. Upper East Side has great amount of kids, family and other artists that are interested in community; the programs and workshops that I designed are leverage the advantages of the space and the target audience.
Detailed Proposed Public Programming
Project and Program Mood Board
Work Samples Submitted and their Documentation
Work sample name: Pointe in ZhongShan, China, click to read more
Work sample name: Dancers at the Barre - Kitchen Alone/Quarantine Edition, click to read more
Work sample name: Celebrate Us - clothing design for International Women's Day 2021, click to read more
Work sample name: Fixing Mistakes, click to read more
Work sample name: Oriental Express to Moo - Lunar New Year 2021, click to read more