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.
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