Asian-American artist Mei-ling Hom swoops 35 open-wire “clouds” and “mountains” through the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery’s cavernous entry pavilion. It’s the first time the harsh, dehumanized space has looked this good.Titled “Floating Mountains, Singing Clouds,” the site-specific installation is part of Miss Hom’s search for her cultural identity. “When I began to live in Asia, I immersed myself in the deeper meanings of Chinese art and asked, ’How Chinese am I?’” she says.
The artist, 54, expresses her multicultural heritage when she talks about clouds. “I was drawn to clouds because they travel everywhere and are perceived in different ways by different cultures,” Miss Hom notes. No J.M.W. Turner is she, although she says she admires the Englishman’s work.
Weaving metal into an 87-by-26-foot space with 20-foot-high ceilings, she sculpts with space, light and wire for metaphorical clouds and mountains. Miss Hom says she created them specifically for the pavilion’s “transitional” space, an ambience that propels visitors from an outer reality to that of the art in an underground museum.
Miss Hom draws from both Asian and Western traditions in what she calls her “landscapes in space.” Instead of creating landscapes through rolled Chinese scrolls and brush-and-ink, she pierces space with different materials.
Spotlighted by low-voltage halogen lights mounted above, the shifting, cloudlike chicken-wire (hexnet) forms hang at different levels from the pavilion’s ceiling, well above visitors’ heads. Although brightly lighted — sometimes too blindingly — in the shadowed space, the forms create ephemeral and physical spaces in which reflections play.
It’s a study in contrasts, as is she. Raised in New Haven, Conn., in a Chinese-speaking family, educated in American schools punctuated by visits to Asia, and teaching in a Philadelphia college, the artist concludes, “I straddle both cultures.” She has been honored with numerous residencies and recently won one of the coveted Joan Mitchell Awards for 2005.
She asks, “How Chinese am I?” but the Sackler work only partly answers the query. The pavilion’s polished limestone environment proves unsympathetic to her goals with its stark, rectilinear design, although it’s somewhat alleviated by scrim-covered panels and walls. Moreover, the artist used unusual Western materials such as wire to replace age-old Chinese inks, colors, silk and papers.
She says the Chinese “qi,” meaning breath or spiritual energy, became crucial to her work over time and led to her collaborating with composer Eli Marshall, who was trained at the Yale School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. He is a guest professor at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music.
Her artwork is accompanied by his “Cloud Elements,” written for what Mr. Marshall describes as the “air-based” xiao (the Chinese vertical bamboo flute) and for Miss Hom’s piece. The music enhances what she calls her “breath-filled” forms.
Although clearly inspired by Chinese philosophy, the artist works in Western ways. She first cuts off a length of mesh and knits it together for a cylinder form. Using needlenose pliers, she opens the hexagons of the chicken wire and gradually smoothes each out.
“Next, I chop up pieces and later pull and knit them back together. I usually look for specific shapes that evolve into organic forms,” the artist says.
If Miss Hom asks about her identity here, it’s her Chinese heritage that wins. It’s confirmed when she writes at the entry label, “Imagine this room as a mountain, high up in the clouds. /Walk around and underneath the clouds./Watch their appearance change depending on the light and where you are standing.”
Even with the disadvantages of the Sackler pavilion space, this is an extraordinary achievement. See it before it closes March 5.
WHAT: “Floating Mountains, Singing Clouds”
WHERE: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Ave. SW
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, through March 5
TICKETS: Free
PHONE: 202/633-1000
ONLINE: www.asia .si.edu/press
Please read our comment policy before commenting.