An exhibition of paper cutting is on display at J Gallery at the Shanghai Center. The creator of these paper-cutting works, a woman farmer from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, stood in the center, a little self-conscious on the opening day.
Wang Guiying, 62, has spent most of her life in the countryside of poverty-stricken Xuzhou, doing hard farming work and caring for her family.
She picked up a pair of scissors at the age of eight and started cutting traditional decorative patterns - common practice among country women.
In the 1980s, she started to cut things she saw in her everyday life. Farmers collecting the harvest, feeding chickens, raising silkworms and catching fish all came under her scissors.
She became known as a folk artist for her cutting of the country life, when her work was discovered by the Xuzhou TV Station.
Critics and professional paper-cutting artists say her work is revolutionary in breaking the symmetry and stylization of traditional paper cutting. One critic has called her "the Chinese Matisse".
She does the cutting without drawing a sketch on paper.
"Some people draw on the paper and then cut. I can't do that," she said.
Figures in her works have exaggerated movements and simplified body language. Besides the life and work of the country people, she also cuts scenes in folk stories that are told generation after generation among the people.
Her works tells a lot about the country life of China hundreds of years ago, as well as today.
Shanghai TV station jointly made a documentary with Xuzhou TV about Wang. The documentary is played in the gallery during the exhibition.
Visitors to the exhibition can see scenes of her work through the camera lens of the TV makers. The story of her family, the death of her husband from stomach cancer, the building of a new house for her younger son, who is not yet married, her work and life, is told by the documentary.
( Shanghai Star March 5, 2002)
