ELLEN JONG

New Sculptural Work in Ink : 

My art allows me to be the initiator of my own history. I choose subjects and materials that reflect my Asian-American female-hood and life experiences rooted in perpetual identity crisis and awakening. My latest body of work in ink sculpture reimagines ancient and traditional calligraphic ink to unexpected ends to  explore the body, stereotypes, personal history, and cultural identity.

The ink from my childhood and Chinese heritage is an organic material. Animal protein and pigments are mixed over heat so that I can manipulate them into form. This organic material is fundamentally transformative and impermanent, impacted by heat and moisture. The ink is not just applied onto the surface of the body. It is the body. I use conventional methods and inventive techniques so the sculptures I make in ink can be formed and dehydrated, and still be rehydrated and deformed.

I also use ink as a surrogate for time and time travel so that I can revisit the past (personal and collective) in order to move forward; an active reconciliation and discovery that offers comfort in the multitude of transformations that happen in a fast-growing, shifting, age of anxiety.

"For my new ink body sculptures,

ink is not just applied to the surface of the body.

It IS the body."

- Jong

In 2014, I visited Guilin China and encountered a 'water prison' in a preserved limestone river cave dwelling - a trench as deep as 8ft eroded over time by the river tides that had held prisoners left to die by drowning - and reinterpreted it as my body as a water prison in a site specific performance in an underground bunker in Shanghai China. Revisiting the Chinese ink stick by using it to mark the walls recalled memories from childhood. The lines not only renegotiate with body, form and place, mortality and transcendence, it also draws a line from which I began to reclaim the ancient ink as my own.  

FOR MORE NEW SCULPTURAL WORK IN INK   >  Studio visit 

Video with audio please

FLUNG INK - Some of my first ink sculptures were in the form of ink balls in various states of dehydration. As a way to become more intimate with the material, I wanted to perform an "injection" of ink into my body. These custom air-pressure cannons were used to "shoot" ink balls at images of my nude body parts - into me. 

Process - Injecting, shooting, becoming ink 

INK HEART IN TWO PARTS - A solid cast dehydrated ink model of a human heart in two parts is compared here to a selection of traditional Chinese ink sticks.