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Zhao spruces up the wall in her studio with one of her own paintings. China Daily |
Discarded items take on a fresh life under the transformative skill of a woman who knows the value of waste, Wang Qian reports.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. This is a well-known phrase but for Zhao Xiaoli, it is also a guide to her professional life as she makes art out of garbage.
A variety of recycled objects, including a wooden door, a chair with one leg missing, an old television, a discarded washboard, a broken guitar, plastic bottles and a vintage thermos flask, have provided a canvas of inspiration for Zhao.
“Art should serve the public, who needs us to think outside the box. Through the form of art, the used items can be redefined,” says the 30-year-old.
Zhao’s interest in rubbish is known by many people, even by sanitary workers near her studio in Beijing. When anyone in her community throws furniture out, like a door or a chair, Zhao is always the first to know.
Call it trash, but for Zhao, it can be a work of art; the discarded items can be transformed.
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| Artist Zhao Xiaoli poses beside her artwork at her studio in Beijing. |
In a 30-second video posted in December on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo, Zhao is seen recycling a wooden door. After smoothing its surface, she sweeps a brush in an apparently wild style and allows the paint to splatter on the vertical board. Later, her reproduction of American painter Charles Courtney Curran’s By the Lily Pond appears on the door, as if by magic.
The clip has been viewed over a million times on the platform, with her account attracting more than 524,000 followers.
Her account on the video-sharing platform, Douyin, has garnered nearly 8.5 million followers.
For Zhao, it seems that anything can be her canvas. Last year, a coffee store she often visited was closed and the owner gave her a broken guitar. She created an oil painting which combined works by two Dutch masters, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and Wheat Field with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh.
When someone threw out a chair with one broken leg last year, Zhao took it. After cleaning, she emptied a bottle of blue paint onto the surface of the chair and transformed it into Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The recreated art piece bore the inscription: “Loving Vincent. Sadness will last forever”.
With the masterful stroke of her “magic pen”, a vintage wooden laundry washboard can be the perfect “canvas” for a landscape oil painting. With a full moon on the lake, the rungs have been painted as waves reflecting the moonlight.
Many viewers have been amazed by her imagination, saying that “the piece invites people to look at used items differently”. Some, in good humour, said: “It is the most valuable and beautiful washboard ever seen”.
