喜舍 Om ● Ah ● Home: Healing Space for Body & Mind 崔金哲 Cui Jinzhe

Cui Jinzhe’s exhibition Om ~ Ah ~ Home：Healing Space for Body & Mind, is a poetic journey of finding grounding between the two worlds Jinzhe calls home: Dalian, China, and Edmonton, Alberta. Her work takes the form of three bodies of work, including a painting series, an interactive screen panel installation, and a kinetic mixed media and ceramics sculpture. 

Using Chinese ink painting techniques in the Home painting series, Jinzhe depicts human and animal-like beings intermingling within surreal, dreamy landscapes. In each painting, Jinzhe creates a fantastical ​“home” for each of her chosen subjects, such as Nymph, Seniors, Ocean, Love, Flowing, Farmers, Playground, etc. As significant elements of Jinzhe’s conception of ​“world”, she offers them a sacred and beguiling space to exist both physically and spiritually. 

With titles like Heart Sutra, Enlightenment, Dependent Rising, Cui Jinzhe has created sanctuaries for visitors to her panel installations. Exploring the 2‑dimensional pictorial relationships within traditional Chinese screen paintings, Jinzhe expands the space through the addition of physical objects that viewers can interact with to enrichen the contemplative and mindful experience of exploring connection and belonging. 

The third work is a spinning ceramic and calligraphic sculpture called Om~ Ah~ Home! The clay figures reference the shamanic culture of Jinzhe’s Manchu heritage while the masks are informed by traditional dance of the Baima people of Tibet. Importantly, this work mirrors the cyclical nature of life, like being anchored through the rhythm and flow of time. 

Through this luminary work, Cui Jinzhe seeks to connect us all to her wondrous and evocative cosmos. 

‑Wendy Peart, Curator