Chinese artist Gao Rong uses the handicraft she was taught as a child to create unbelievably realistic replicas of her gradparents’ home and parts of their surrounding neighborhood in inner Mongolia. Rong doesn’t consider herself an embroiderer, but rather a sculptor who uses embroidery. She likens her installations to sculpture, made from materials like cloth, cotton and sponge supported by metal frames to recreate things that would otherwise go unnoticed- thousands of tiny stitches are layered onto the fabric to create the effect of rust on pipes and peeling wallpaper. There is even a sink full of dirty tea cups and dishes with traces of last night’s dinner. A single piece can take several months to complete, carefully studied so that the outcome is identical to actual objects collected by relatives from her grandparents’ house, leveled years ago. Tattered and worn, some might call these things ugly, but to Gong, they represent beautiful artifacts of her childhood memories. “My work does not directly follow traditional Chinese art and craft, or traditional embroidery. Although I am interested by Chinese embroidery, and am inspired by it, I merely use these skills to complete my ideas. I apply my own ideas and creation to these embroidery techniques. I hope that through my art, I can give the audience more of my own personal observation and understanding of the world, as well as bringing a new sensory experience to my artistic creation through the process of handiwork,” she says.
