Fable Beneath the Monument

Wandering through today's streets, we can no longer see past the industrial surface to touch the essence of what makes a place truly itself.

"Fable Beneath the Monument" begins with a gaze fixed on disappearance.

The Jingdezhen Sculpture Porcelain Factory, once a community forged by the sweat of artisans crafting porcelain sculptures in the last century, served as the root of livelihoods and identities for generations. The factory declined after 1995, its workshops fell into decay until 2005 when the Pottery Workshop introduced new creativity and modern ceramists into its ruins. Yet, in recent years, the influx of tourism, with its mass-produced souvenirs and trend-driven aesthetics, has cloaked the landscape’s unique vitality in a haze of homogenization.

In 2023, the factory’s renovated main street started a clamorous new era, folding its past into oblivion. Judith Fang wandered through the fractures of these fading streets, pressing silicone to weathered walls, cracks in craftsmen’s tables, abandoned furniture, the decades-old Sanxing monument, and even the paw prints stray dogs left in rain-dampened mud. These imprints became a tactile lexicon unique to the place. She fragmented and recombined the imprints, firing them into ceramic building blocks. Each piece wears the patina of a splintered past, inviting viewers to playfully reassemble memories into bricks for new landscapes.

Rather than fetishising antiques, Judith Fang’s practice questions and critiques the contemporary environment. Her work lays bare the paradox of locality in globalization: consumed yet enshrined, broken down yet reimagined. When authenticity is packaged into identical souvenirs, when street corners are repainted as decorated backgrounds, when the monument crumbles, can art gather these fragments and build a fable that reinforces the placeness against the flood of consumption?

穿梭在今天的街市，我们已经无法逾越工业的皮囊去触摸地方的本真性。

《纪念碑下的寓言》始于一场关于消逝的凝视。

景德镇雕塑瓷厂，这座曾因上世纪雕塑瓷生产而凝聚人才的国营瓷厂，是几代人家庭、职业与身份的根据地。这里也曾是被计划经济与时代审美抛弃的角落——1995年后厂房凋敝，直至2005年乐天陶社及现代陶艺作者的进驻再次赋予活力；然而，旅游业的涌入带来的批量复制的纪念品以及潮流化的视觉刺激，将地方具有独特生命力的风景蒙上了同质化的尘埃。

2023年，瓷厂全面翻新的主街道拉开了喧嚣的序幕，彻底折叠了这里的过往。方芊穿行于瓷厂的裂隙之间，拓印墙面的斑驳、匠人木桌的裂痕、遗弃的旧家具、矗立数十年的三星碑，甚至流浪狗途径潮湿泥地的足迹，形成一系列独属于雕塑瓷厂的“触觉语言”。她将这些拓片在泥板上杂糅、重组，烧制成可拼砌的积木形镶器。每一块积木披着碎片化的过往，以游戏的方式邀请观众将地方记忆变成搭建新风景的砖瓦。

方芊的创作并非对怀旧的追捧，而是一场对当下的温和质疑。她试图揭露地方性在全球化叙事中的悖论：既被消费，又被纪念；既被拆解，又被重塑。当地方性被制成同质化的纪念品，当街角的老墙面被粉刷成镜头下的精致场景，当纪念碑般的记忆风景凋零，艺术能否化碎片为砖瓦，在不可抗的消费洪流中垒砌出一则珍视地方独特性的寓言？