Sin-ying ho
Bio
Sin-Ying Ho was born in Hong Kong, immigrated to Canada, and currently resides in New York City. Ho is an associate professor at Queens College, City University of New York teaching ceramics art. She holds an MFA from Louisiana State University in 2001, BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1997, High Diploma from Sheridan College Craft and Design in 1995. Ho is the first off campus study from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design to Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in PRChina, 1996.
Ho has taught and run workshops, lectures and exhibitions all across Canada, as well as from Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University to Hong Kong and Jingdezhen - over 1000 years old city of porcelain in China. She has exhibited in the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, France, Germany, Romania and Turkey. She was nominated for a 2011 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. The series of “Eden” was exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her pieces are in the permanent collections of the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire USA, Fidelity Investments in Boston, USA, the Icheon World Ceramic Centre in Korea, Glenbow Museum in Canada, Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan, Consulate General of Canada in Hong Kong. Her work Music serves as the cover image of Utopic Impulses: Contemporary Ceramics Practice, edited by Ruth Chambers, Amy Gogarty & Mireille Perron (Ronsdale Press 2007).
Ho is an advisor of Taoxichuan Art Center, Jingdezhen, PRChina and advisory board member of Watershed Center of Ceramics Art.
Artist Statement
Continuing Journey
I was born and raised in Hong Kong, emigrated to Canada, and currently reside in New York. My work reflects the impact of globalization on the cultural borrowings and interactions in an accelerated “global village”.
Migration, transplanting, and growing up in a colony like Hong Kong generates a sense of displacement and involves a constant negotiation of my identity. This created a dichotomy in my life that was affected by the colonial environment of Hong Kong in the 70’s and 80’s. This paradox is a phenomenon not only for me but it also affects our global village.
Drawing on my Asian background and experiences of the West, I explore the “collision of cultures” in my ceramic work. I pay tribute to the glories of Chinese blue and white wares. I manipulate the forms by deconstructed and reconstructed, transform familiar forms into unfamiliar and unidentified sculptures for my own purposes and surprises the visitor with multiple images, icons, signs and symbols as surface narration. To further highlight temporal differences, I combine traditional hand-painted imagery with the use of new technologies such as computer-generated decals.
I employed a traditional Once Fire technique from Jingdezhen, capital of porcelain in China and the hand painted fine line cobalt painting style (Gong Bi Qing Hua) that flourished in the Ming Dynasty of China. I often use digital decal printing on clay to form juxtapositions in my work. The decal printing allows me to produce homemade images and patterns, using a computer, that can be transferred onto the glazed ceramic work. Aesthetically, this method forms a strong red and blue colour contrast. Conceptually, combining old and new means to create art is another way for me to negotiate the shift and change between technology and hand tools such as the brush.
Artwork entitled “Temptation – Life of Goods no.2 selection from “Garden of Eden" series, a group of 8 pieces of 5. 5 to 6.5 feet tall vessel produces a visual appearance and is a reference to the human form. I paint the traditional hundred flowers Chinese painting with cobalt pigment to juxtapose a silhouette of ‘Adam and Eve’ as referenced from Renaissance paintings. Inside the silhouette of ‘Adam and Eve’, I use contemporary digital symbols, corporate logos, stock market index charts and different languages that are then transferred by a digital decal technique. These images of consumerism and the trace of technology create a visual metaphor that expresses the relationship between never changing human Nature and the continuing change of our physical world.
In the past 29 years, I haven’t stopped connecting my family and friends in Hong Kong, China. I travel back and fro of these two continents, negotiating the identity, embracing cultural colliding, and blending, struggling in different value and believe systems, facing contradiction and making balancing of everyday live, looking back and moving forward.
Through social media, I received from family and friends’ messages, images, opinions about protests in Hong Kong in 2014. Although I didn’t witness and experience the incident on September 28, 2014, “Occupied Central, Hong Kong”, I felt a moment of division of people in Hong Kong, my hometown. The artwork titled “9.28.2014, Occupied Central, Hong Kong” was created at that time. I couldn’t suppress my sentiment towards the city of Hong Kong.
In this work, I borrowed the image of blue ribbon wearing by blue collar people in Hong Kong and yellow ribbon wearing by Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters to create an opposing force and tension. The Chinese character double happiness is separated. The fragment of a vases (“Ping” same sound of Peace in Chinese) was split however these split pieces need to be maintained into a one piece. I channelled my frustration, care, love, and hope into the artwork.
Under the unprecedent time caused by the Covid-19, I strongly admit that we are no longer living in a singularity society or country. We are connected and with crossed borders not only in a macroscope world but also in a microscope world and the virtual world. I was inspired by the images of the actual coronavirus, 5G cloud, corporate logos and stock market index charts that are I then transferred by a digital decal technique. These images of the living virus, consumerism and the trace of technology create a visual metaphor that expresses the relationship between the never changing human nature and the continuing change of our physical world.
East vs. West, Past vs. Present, Symbol vs. Language, Painting vs. transfer, Vessel vs. sculpture, 2D vs. 3D, these elements collide and evolve into one. This mélange of modern and traditional ideas and various clay techniques provokes questions of identity and memory, while paying tribute to one of the finest ceramic traditions — Chinese porcelain, under the globalized world.
We are living in a complex world. I am like some other immigrants continue being here and there, now, and then, surviving, exploring, understanding, balancing of the value of life. Most importantly is to embrace this uniqueness journey of living in the “In Between”.
Exhibitions
