I am a multidisciplinary artist (oil painter, photographer, writer, poet) and art scholar.
Since the beginning of the 1990s I have been building an archive of photographs from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Korea, Japan. 
My work, and life, is deeply inspired by my lifelong immersion in Asia and Asian art (aesthetic principles, landscape painting). I specialized in traditional ink painting (Xu Wei 徐渭) and in contemporary Chinese art.

My name as an artist, art critic, art scholar is known in the Asian artworld (包德贞) and in Europe. I trained in oil painting at SL Academy Ghent. This site lists a selection of oil paintings I have created since 2011 (a major turning point in my life) and exhibitions from recent years.

 

Art is holistic. I am passionate about taoist aesthetic principles (the use of 'emptiness', 'floating perspective'); my method is oil paint. I use the color 青 (qing)Qing is sometimes translated as ‘blue’, sometimes as ‘green’, and sometimes as ‘black’; it refers to the ‘color of mountains in the distance’. Like a grain of sand, a leaf of a tree, a human being is a minuscule part of nature. As soon as I pick up the brush I disappear into the mountains transferring the tranquility around me onto the canvas. I love to paint with sketchy bold brushstrokes and let the oilpaint harmonize into tranquil powerful images. 

 

Art is engagement. I am interested in power (post/de/re)colonization and decolonialty, in how power works through myth building, the readiness of masses to blindly serve and follow, in bottom-up dynamics and in the tipping point - a split second in which everything turns around and mighty power falls into pieces, the point of no return and powershifts, and in the role of art and cultural memory. My series Strong Women | Shifting Power explores political, academic, philosophical artistic, ethnic, and gender power shifts. Around the world bottom-up paradigm shifts are taking place. I want to pay tribute to strong women like Elisa Loncón (Chile), Nanaia Mahuta (New Zealand), Sada Mire (Somalia) and many more.

 

My artwork is held in private collections in the US, UK, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Chile, Hong Kong, and China.

I am a regular guest of national and international media (television, radio, art magazines).
My literary and critical work is listed on jeanneboden.com.

I follow: Asian Art ArchiveChina Global South Project China Project

 

  • M.A.R.C. My brother died. His torment turned tranquility. His spirit into mine.

    M.A.R.C.

    My brother died.
    His torment turned tranquility.
    His spirit into mine.