Memory

I have known Lei Yan for several decades, ever since the time we worked together in the Kunming Military Region in the 1970s. I still remember that we spent a lot of time preparing for the art exhibitions in the army then.

Lei Yan made a series of prints, titled “We Have Lei Feng Everywhere”. It has been cited by many forms of media and been very influential. I was new in the army at that time and I felt so fortunate to receive tremendous help from Lei Yan – she was such a good and experienced teacher. It is a great honor for me.

Lei Yan served in the army from as early as the age of 14. She worked in a military hospital, a school and later in a research institution - she has been a soldier, a nurse, a scholar and researcher and also a military officer in various places. Even though she has had a range of careers, Lei Yan had always been greatly interested in art and especially paintings, leading her to produce a lot of art work which has been seen in many military inter art exhibitions. Lei Yan and I have had numerous discussions about art ever since she graduated from the China Military Fine Art College. In 1994, Lei Yan and I were invited by the Military Political Department to work together for the media art work titled, “The Pictures of an Era”, from which I found that she was no longer a soldier who only liked painting but an artist who had her own ideas and views on art. Because of her experience in printmaking, Lei Yan was more interested in printed material and was able to do a fine job. In 2001, with the completion of her new Loft in Kunming, Lei Yan retired from the military where she had served for more than 30 years and set up a studio in her Loft. Since then, Lei Yan has had more opportunities to communicate with foreign artists, institutions and art studios. She has recently finished a series of good pictures and set works, in which I found the theme “Memory” to have become her main focus in art.

We can have memories of certain people, of certain things, of sadness and happiness, of the happenings in our daily life and also of the nightmares we face in our lives. Because of the different personalities and life experiences, the memories arising from different people can be a very special element. In her time as an artist, Lei Yan used her memories of military service to express a special history of her life in the army - a story of a certain group of soldiers, a reflection of our nation and also a short biography of that time. The personal experience based on a period of national history, in other words, the memory that was created from that particular period of national history, became the fountain of Lei Yan’s art work, where she focused more on a human being’s soul, imagination, history and the future that we look towards.

The theme of “Memory” in Lei Yan’s latest work is one of the most valuable series of art done by a person born in the 1950s. I wish Lei Yan’s personal exhibition to be a roaring success!

Zhigang Tang
Loft, Kunming, China
December 2nd 2006