Born in Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia, in 1958, Kong Ning lived through political turmoil during which her parents fell victims. Under persecution, her father committed suicide and her mother survived repeated suicide attempts. In 1980, right after her mother was cleared of political infamy, Kong Ning and her mother migrated to Beijing. She worked for seven years at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate, from 1981 to 1988. She passed the bar exam in 1989 and started working as a defense lawyer for death row criminals until 2001, when she opted out of the legal profession for a new career as an artist. She endured a divorce, suffered through surgery following a misdiagnosis, and was admitted to a mental hospital even though she was not mentally ill. She has designed and built her own villa that she refers to as the Rose Citadel. She paints old painting, creates environmental protection devices, stages art exhibitions throughout the world that focus on protecting the earth, and writes poetry every day. Self-disciplined and productive, Kong Ning has created nearly 1,000 large oil paintings, many of which are collected by art institutions and private collectors. For over 10 years, she wore wedding gowns that she made for herself to showcase her love for the earth and call for peace and environmental protection. She made 38 handicrafts in the pattern of tree leaves, masks, little blue dolls, water droplets, doves, etc. Her documentary movie Marrying a Horse won recognition at a film festival. Her art exhibitions, themed “Marrying the Blue Sky,” “Life like a Drop of Water,” and “Little Blue Doll,” have garnered worldwide media attention. On December 12, 2017, Kong Ning attended the Paris Summit to do a “Little Blue Doll” art performance. Her photo with the “Doll” became one of 25 photos the Summit released to the general public. Her environmental protection campaign has won appreciation from French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron.
後記:
I often think, in my stubborn way, that I am the child destined to turn the steering wheel of a world going blindly in the wrong direction, even though I am just a drop of water from the universe.
Earth has not been happy since the start of Britain’s Industrial Revolution! People have racked their brains engaging in scientific research, revealing (in a sense) what humanity has achieved thus far and realizing only superfluous, polluted, laundry-listed, backlogged, and ruinous “modernization.”
From horseback riding to cycling, airplane flight to high-speed rail, people have gone to great lengths in their pursuit of speed and stimulation. They have been busy signing the next trash contract, as if they have forgotten about their future and long-term interests! They make, and remake, things, desperately expanding their development projects and never ceasing to undermining nature. The dazzle and confusion of lights and the dizzy, sizzling skyscrapers have nothing to do with humans, but we are forced to passively accept and get used to them. Modern cities, built at the cost of our environment, may not necessarily bring you happiness because the crisp sounds of birds chirping are all you want to hear when you awake by yourself. Naked we came from our mother’s womb, and naked we will all depart. Unfortunately, this is a truth we discover only after we have used up too much of our resources.
When we calm down and think, apart from our loved ones, body, feelings of hunger, sleepiness, fatigue, and sickness, other things are actually never directly related to us. Much of our time is completely shackled by external, commercial things and our short life is willingly being swallowed up. The vast manufacturing sector is ferocious and reckless. Many researchers do all kinds of experiments on the heart of the earth, even making nuclear weapons! This is to serve vested interests. Most people are mere bystanders, not realizing that while they enjoy, use, and consume, the quiet earth is already angry! It’s erupting like a volcano or tsunami! It’s watching and trying to determine when humanity will get out of this mess.
In fact, we can easily learn what we truly need the moment we close our eyes and think. What do we really need? We need love and mutual understanding! When countries try to create wealth and become superpowers, the earth gazes at them affectionately, but laments to itself how unwisely we are wasting our youth, mutilating our beauty, and hurting and scarring it every moment. Indifferent human beings keep building huge, inanimate garbage monsters, making it impossible for the earth to coexist with them!
Since childhood, I’ve thought of myself as a silly girl sent by the universe to love and protect the earth. When I was six, I had a vision of myself squatting outside the earth and I witnessed how the rotating earth was afflicted with many bumps and saw how it was suffering.
I know the earth! That’s why I unconsciously live in this world like an atypical human being. In times of suffering, I can’t help but think I have fully accepted, either through writing, painting, or behavioral art, the mission the universe has entrusted me with since my early childhood. I believe the concept of a green earth will transform the earth into a recycling green loop as we ask people to become inventors, manufacturers, purchasers, producers, users, and keepers of environmentally-friendly goods. Every purchase can be a work of art, recyclable to the earth! Everyone in our future world can be producers, inventors, artists, or ecologists! The moment of returning to the earth has come! Everyone should be actively involved in restoring the original beauty of the earth.
I would like to see a transparent, spherical supermarket in every city – a huge, surreal, magical supermarket that combines shopping, visiting, and awakening into one space where human needs are collected. In this supermarket, you could basically order any new invention or new product and it will be delivered to, or custom made for you. You will be informed when your selected items will be converted to tree leaves or wheat straw! The world must discard the assembly line! Reject large warehouses and backlogs so farmland and nature can be restored! Many backlogs that an increasing number of factories produce add too much strain to the earth because they are nothing more than garbage the earth must swallow and endure.
My concept is that people will become “light” after entering the spherical supermarket and they will be lifted up in joy. This surreal shopping space would endow one with new life. What you click on will be what you need, but it will also impart love and enliven your soul! You will become a meaningful member of green Earth! You could buy a straw plate conceived of, and made by, an African child, which, after use, could be recycled to fertilize the soil. Chairs, tables, and houses could all be biodegradable and eventually end up at the bottom of the sea, in farm fields, or in forests. When I reflect and wonder why I’ve spent so many years producing over 30 “marriage-series” art performances, it suddenly dawns on me that I’ve been doing this out of a sense of mission! Children of the future will look forward to having Earth’s bride dolls as toys! These dolls are, in fact, eco-friendly dolls that enable children to realize that humanity and nature are one. When these dolls grow old, they can be told to sleep in flower pots and become flowers or fertilizer! When the flowers are in full bloom, the girls owning the dolls will realize that those dolls are actually nature itself and can be born again.
I have attempted to convey my concept of the Green Earth Supermarket to well-known manufacturers in China, including air-conditioning producer Dong Mingzhu and refrigerator producer Zhang Ruimin. We discussed the possibility of converting their products into surreal multimedia products with “souls” of their own; not just products serving practical purposes, but serving a new species of life. By this, I mean these products should be able to breathe, change color, and find it easy to move about as opposed to staying still on the floor or being mounted on a wall. Replace the original heavy engine with a digital module and simulate refrigeration with a micro-circuit! These machines would occasionally power off automatically, based on the needs of nature. They would be multi-media devices, reacting to the sounds of art and nature. I want to make a movie called Big Eyes. These eyes are not human eyes, but the eyes of mission and solution! Since I’ve been creating behavioral art, each time I wear a symbolic wedding dress and look up into the sky, I feel as if I’m being kissed by the sky and tears gush from my eyes without my knowing it. I seem to have unconsciously completed the task the universe entrusted to me! I’m moving forward, step by step, on my mission to keep my commitment to the universe. I hope to see the movie project begin as soon as possible.
|