The Creators Project: Sometimes where there’s smoke... there’s a meditative installation. Artist Jennifer Wen Ma, who previously translated the I Ching into a light show on the side of a building in Beijing, planted a tiny forest of Chinese ink-drenched trees in downtown Pittsburgh, complete with wooden pathway, fog machine, and orbs of “sparkle.” While Ma’s goal was to “mimic the look of a classical scholar’s studio in the mountains as is often depicted in Chinese landscape painting,” as she writes on her site, the work's dynamic use of fog has already prompted a number of passersby to call firefighters.
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At first I didn’t realize that the tress were real, and very much alive. Drenching anything in ink gives the aura of death, ink is dark and toxic when consumed and I think a plant would absorb the ink into its stalks and roots, no? But the idea of the exhibit is great, when spring comes and these plants begin to bloom, seeing the green and whites and violets against the black of the ink and Pittsburgh’s grey sky will be pretty awe-inspiring. I Googled ink covered trees and didn’t find any information on them (not to say that it doesn’t exist, so I don’t really understand what they mean when they reference them as Chinese ink covered trees. I would be really interested to see the process as I don’t think that ink would stick to waxy cellulose casings. I would also like to hear from a biologist what is chemically happening to the plants, and how they manage to survive being soaked in ink for so long.
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