The nativists and immigrants
“Yun-Fei Ji is a Beijing born, New York based artist whose satirical works critique prevailing global power structures to consider the forced migration and willing immigration of people around the world and their resulting experiences, which are exclusionary and predicated on bias. In Ji’s ink and watercolor painting [The nativists and immigrants], the artist presents this rising tide of intolerance and the predicament faced by anyone not representative of the dominant culture. A muted color palette combined with a mixture of humans and anthropomorphic animal forms appears at first glance light-hearted, even humorous. Surrounded by three women, a tiger-headed figure dominates the foreground, directly behind them looms an ox and a pig, both with human bodies. There is much to consider in this scene, yet my eye is repeatedly drawn to the crouching tiger figure. The magnetism of this tiger-figure almost explains how people can be unwittingly led astray by the dynamism of leaders, cultural movements, and collective opinions. But here, Ji’s figure alludes to the Confucian parable of a tyrannical government being worse than death as a tiger’s lunch. In light of this symbolism, Ji references the social ills and struggles immigrants and people of color face around the world. The artist illuminates the complex and precarious balance between assimilating for survival, navigating the unfamiliar, prevailing against societal biases, and preserving one’s individual sense of cultural identity. This last factor is especially poignant because nativists and immigrants have something in common: they are all struggling to retain their cultural identities.”
2020-2021: Art amidst Chaos by Rehema C. Barber · October 09, 2021 aicausa.org/magazine/2020-2021-art-amidst-chaos
Yun-Fei Ji
The nativists and immigrants, 2021, Ink and watercolor on paper, 30 x 27 1/2 in 76.2 x 69.8 cm., Image courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, NY.
The camouflaged man with a dagger, Ink and watercolor on paper, 29 1/8” x 27 5/8”, 2021
Yellow and blue umbrellas, Ink and watercolor on paper, 2021
The hooded skeleton on a goat, Ink and watercolor on paper, 23 1/4” x 16 3/8”, 2021
The three hooded men, Ink and watercolor on paper, 18 1/2” x 19 1/4”, 2021
Yun-Fei Ji
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jamescohan.com/artists/yun-fei-ji
Yun-Fei Ji was born in 1963 in Beijing, China. He earned his BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and his MFA from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 2005, Ji was Artist-in-residence at Yale University where he conducted extensive research with the institution’s scholars. He received the 2006 American Academy Prix de Rome Fellowship and Residency and was the 2007 Artist-in-residence at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London.
Ji is inspired by the ghost stories that he first learned growing up in the countryside during the late Chinese Cultural Revolution. He employs the stacked perspective and flattened space of classical Chinese painting to tell contemporary stories that, while geographically specific, speak to a collective human experience. The work often comments on political realities of both US and China, expressed in codes by using metaphor and allusion. There is a satirical streak, and his love of the grotesque is balanced with humor and a deep sense of irony. Each work is an act of resistance, insisting that narratives of displacement and environmental destruction are worth preserving.