The Cutting Edge of Moby Dick: Qiao Xiaoguang’s Papercuts

In his 2009 Moby-Dick papercuts, Qiao Xiaoguang brings together diverse elements to illuminate Herman Melville's iconic and capacious novel.

Underwritten by Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas and Beth Schultz

In his 2009 Moby-Dick papercuts, Qiao Xiaoguang brings together diverse elements to illuminate Herman Melville’s iconic and capacious novel. Qiao, who was born in 1957 and is an established artist in Beijing and professor and director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, learned traditional Chinese papercutting techniques from the elderly women who practice it in rural China. Consequently, his very contemporary papercuts continue to reference the plants and animals of China’s countryside. They also continue to depend on an intricacy of design characteristic of these techniques which were developed in China more than 1500 years ago.

The three Moby-Dick papercuts in this exhibit demonstrate Qiao’s extraordinary skill in using this traditional Chinese craft to interpret visually a novel written in the nineteenth century in the United States about whaling, an industry now nearly obsolete. Although both his method of his art and his subject matter are connected to the past, Qiao’s vision makes his works contemporary. They appear realistic as well as abstract, humorous as well as thought-provoking. In his large portrait of Queequeg, the Polynesian harpooner in Moby-Dick, the long jagged lines suggest a strength of character, and the difference between his eyes suggest that one is ever watchful while the other gazes inward. In large and intricate papercuts, titled “The Story of Moby Dick” and “The Flowering of Moby Dick,” Qiao expresses the capiousness, the mystery, the regenerative possibilities of both the whale and the novel. He suggests that the whale literally blossoms while the characters are shown in relationship to its living mystery.

Artist's Talk: Qiao Xiaoguang, September 27, 2011 at 7:00PM