H₂O-A Study of Art History

By Miao Xiaochun

Translated by Hao Yanjing

I really don’t know where I was from or where I will go, but I know many substances go into and out of my body every day, among which is water-H2O. Before entering my body, it has gone through numerous living things: plants, animals, and human beings; and it will again go through numerous plants, animals and human beings after being released from my body. I am just one of the containers holding it temporarily, or one of the points it flows by. Water has been recycling through oceans, the sky, and the land. The process has begun ever since remote ages, continues to the present, and will continue into future, never stopping, repeating forever in an endless way. Does it carry and deliver certain information about the source and destination of life? All forms of life and water vitally interrelate with each other? Do they thus show compassion and concern for each other? Is constantly changing life, which is delicate and subtle like water, recycling endlessly as water does? Will vanished life condense again at some other place and return to earth just like evaporated water drops condensing into rain, snow, or frost?

Compared with the history of all forms of life, the history of art is too short to be worth mentioning; but compared with individual life, the history of art is fairly long. Selecting from the long as well as short history of art several works involving water which touch me to the heart, I try to depict through latest digital technology the grand inter-linkage of life played by water. The thousands of characters in these works have been replaced by a three dimensional model of my own image created with computer, a kind of “metabolism”—just like water flowing into my body： in this way, I have “flowed” into different works of other times and have “generated” entirely new art works which have blood and flesh relations with the original ones.