Sun Yitian Self-portrait, 2025
Acrylic on canvas, acrylic on wood panel
Left canvas: 180,2 x 136,5 x 9 cm (framed)
Right canvas: 180,2 x 136,5 x 9 cm (framed)
Wood panel: 63 x 33 x 9 cm (framed)
Right canvas: 180,2 x 136,5 x 9 cm (framed)
Wood panel: 63 x 33 x 9 cm (framed)
Sun Yitian's large-scale triptych is structured similar to an altarpiece: two architectural scenes on the left and right wings frame the artist’s self-portrait at its center.
The artist depicts herself exposed in a bathing suit and yet protected by a face covering, both vulnerable and defiant. The so-called "facekini," is a relatively recent invention. It appeared in 2004 on the beaches of the coastal city of Qingdao, in response to demands for full protection from both the sun and from jellyfish stings. To the artist, it evokes also the much older tradition of female divers in Asia and with it a symbol of female independent spirit in a patriarchal society.
The tradition of female diving is known both in Japan where Amas have been recorded for nearly 200 years, as well as South Korea, for example, on the island of Jeju where the Haenyeo are a community of female free-divers are first mentioned around 1629. In 2016 Haenyeo was added to the UNESCO Intangible World Heritage. They represent community and independence.
The sides also convey a sense of fragility: the large stately windows may themselves only be a facade, a set that could fall at any moment. The vistas of a purplish sky seen through the Western-style arches may also be simply a backdrop.
Sun Yitian's play with notions of artifice points to a hyperreal quality of today's image world. Her notion of hyperreality draws partially on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the simulacrum. Formulated the 1980s, it stipulates that simulations of an idealized world such as Disneyworld concealed the real world's artificiality.