Momo Meng
China
Imaginative, vibrant, aesthetic, thought-provoking, they are the traits of Momo Meng's artwork. Momo loves observing society, exploring the deep emotions of humans and animals, and capturing them in her art. She creates works to be the voice for the voiceless, the powerless, the hopeless, in order to fight against the absurd, the violence and inequalities. She wishes her creations could raise the audience's awareness, be the standing point to fight for a better future, a better society which has variety, equality, a healthy environment, and respect for all living beings.
Photoshop and CorelDraw are Momo’s favorite tools. With an urban design background, her works are creative with a rigorous sense of spatial perspective. Momo holds a B.Eng. Urban Planning and Design from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou City, China. Her works have been shown across Europe and China through exhibitions, art fairs and publications.
极具想象力、色彩艳丽夺目富于美感，细节丰满细腻，立意深刻发人深省，这些都是Momo Meng作品的特色。Momo喜欢观察社会，探索和捕捉人类以及动物深层次的情感，继而把她的理解和感受融入艺术创作当中。她希望自己的作品能为无声弱势团体发声，能揭示和反抗社会上的荒谬、暴力以及不公，能为建设一个多样化、包容平等、健康和敬重所有生命的社会而贡献出力量。
Photoshop和CorelDraw是Momo最喜欢的绘图工具。Momo毕业于中国广州中山大学城市规划设计专业，主修城市规划设计的学术背景，让Momo的作品在富有创意和感性的同时，也兼具了空间透视的严谨和逻辑性。Momo的作品通过展览、艺术博览会以及艺术出版物等方式在欧洲和中国得到了广泛的展出和推广。
Revealing Mirror
1. What’s your background?
I’m an illustrator and conceptual artist based in Guangzhou City, China. Guangzhou is a beautiful subtropical city covered with glorious flowers in all seasons; it is also called the Flower City in China. She is ancient, she is modern, she’s soft, and she’s strong and heroic. Born and raised in such a passionate, colorful and characteristic Alpha City, my works are naturally rich in Guangzhou flavor. Vividly colorful, intensely emotional, imaginative and aesthetic, they are the traits of my artwork. I majored in urban planning and design in university, which adds a rigorous sense of spatial perspective to my creative work. My works have been shown across Europe and China through exhibitions, art fairs and publications.
2. What does your work aim to say?
I love observing society, exploring the deep emotions of humans and animals, and capturing them in my art. I create works to be the voice for the voiceless, the powerless, the hopeless; I want to use my creations to fight against the absurd, the violence and inequalities in our societies. I wish my artworks could raise the audience's awareness, be the standing point to fight for a better future, a better world. In there, we will achieve variety, equality, a healthy environment, and respect for all living beings.
3. How does your work comment on current social or political issues?
To discuss the social and political issues of today's world, it is essential to combine the background of the global pandemic. In the context of the pandemic, I have created several new works. Among which, "Revealing Mirror" is the one that mostly reflects my views of today's world as a Chinese artist. As I wrote in my creative description of “Revealing Mirror"： "COVID-19 is a magic mirror that reflects the true nature of everything". Through this penetrating mirror, you can clearly find out whether a country's government truly serves its people or not; whether a government does everything it can to save lives or not; whether a country's world pattern is narrow or broad; whether a country's development vision is long-term or short-term; whether the relationship between countries or between people are genuine or hypocritical.
I admire and totally agree with the concept of “building a global community with a shared future for mankind” proposed by our President Xi Jinping in 2012. I believe that this is the most forward-looking international concept in the past decade, the only solution to all issues in our world. Regardless of skin color, nationality, or language, mankind is a closely related community with a shared future. Only by understanding and helping each other, cooperating closely, can we together survive this severe global pandemic and move forward to a better future. The concept “a global community with a shared future for mankind” inspires me a lot. Works I’ve created during the pandemic, like "Revealing Mirror", “I want to give you a hug, lovely people”, “Guangzhou﹒Home﹒Stay strong" and so on, they’re all based on its principles. In these works, I praise love, dedication, friendship, cooperation and respect; strongly condemn prejudice, discrimination, racism, Unilateralism, hypocrisy, and disregard for life. Art is a universal diplomatic language, and artists are diplomats. I hope that my creations will help the world understand China better, and I also wish that my creations can contribute to the unity of the people of the world.
4. Who are your biggest influences?
Jean-Jacques Sempé, William Somerset Maugham, Irvin D. Yalom, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the idols whom I admire so much, they are masters in the fields of visual art, literature, psychology and philosophy. Reading their works is a very pleasant life experience, and the wisdom revealed in their works has given me unlimited creative inspiration. Although they are engaged in different fields, their works have similar characteristics, thought-provoking, passionate, exquisite, sarcastic and humorous. Many of my creations also share the above features, which show that these masters’ works have an extremely profound and huge impact on the formation on my art style.
Using one of my favorite quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche to express my admiration and gratitude to these talents:
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
5. How has your art evolved over the years?
Whether on techniques, the complexity of image structure, the coordination of color application, the visual tension and the depth of meaning, my current creative height is far above my earlier level in the areas above. Constantly creating is the key to progress; meanwhile the increasing life experience and the better understanding of the meaning of life over these years, also help me improve my creation.
6. What does art mean to you?
To me, art is the process of pursuing and creating beauty; the process of finding myself and expressing the inner feelings; the process of experiencing the coexistence of pain and happiness; the process of watching time flowing through my fingers day by day; the process of living itself.
Creating artworks is not my job, not my hobby, but what I fierily need to do in my life. While I’m creating, I find calmness for my overthinking mind; I find an outlet for my overwhelming emotions; I find my courage and purpose to walk on the thorny path of life. Art is my life.
7. What’s the most valuable piece of art to you?
For me, the most valuable works of art should be works created by artists with their souls, and works that are beneficial to the progress of human society. Specifically, it includes works that can make the audience think deeply; works that can deliver the audience with empathy; works that can comfort the audience; and works that can promote the unity of the people of the world. This is often not directly related to the medium and price of the artwork, or the reputation and fame of the artist. The originality of the artwork, the creative intention, and the length of creation, they are the indicators to judge an art creation’s value.
In the works I have created so far, I would pick “The Machine”, the center piece of my theme creation “Trilogy of Society” as my most valuable art piece. “The Machine” touches many aspects of our society, including social values, environmental crisis, pollution, animal cruelty, slave labor, war, poverty and so on. It is a thought-provoking work, and it is also an original substantial work that took me a long time to finish.
8. What’s next for you in the future?
I'm currently working on two huge projects. One is “The Trilogy of Society”, a thought-provoking, detailed and large-format project that discusses our society issues; the other one is “Shadow Self”, a surrealist project dedicated to in-depth exploration of the deep psychological world of human. I have completed the first two parts of "The Trilogy of Society", they’re "Breeding Lab" and "The Machine", and I am working on the last part of this project, "The Prison".
The first work of the “Shadow Self” project is called “Creatures of Wrath”, it is a large and very Chinese style art piece. And currently I'm working on the second piece in this project; the work is called “Breeds of self”. It's a very exciting new piece, and I can't wait to show it to the world.
Breeding Lab
