Petals of a metaphor

Artist Xu Jiang's new exhibition at the National Museum of China features sunflowers that are distorted, dark, withered and growing densely. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Xu Jiang's new exhibition captures the power of sunflowers in literature and lore. The artist tells about his decadelong fascination with these blossoms.

More than 1,600 aluminum sculptures of sunflowers, as high as 6 meters, stand in a square near the entrance to the National Museum of China.

Almost every visitor is compelled to stop for a look at them. Some may even ask: Why are the plants not bright and blooming as they are usually seen in artistic works?

It is perhaps the question most frequently posed to Xu Jiang, the creator of the sunflowers and president of the China Academy of Art.

Distorted, dark, withered and growing densely, these are the signature features of the sunflowers created by Xu. He likens the struggling characteristics of the commonly seen plants to the spirit of his generation who have experienced the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

Millions of youths were forced to leave school and sent to work in the country's remote, rural areas during the "cultural revolution".

"The sunflower has particular significance to the Chinese in my cohort," says Xu, 59. His generation views the plant as a symbol of themselves, people who have struggled and now can examine their loss and sufferings from the era.

"In my primary school, sunflowers were the most commonly drawn plant on blackboards. As the plant turns naturally toward the sun at all times, people liken themselves to the flowers," Xu says.

The sun was a common metaphor of Mao Zedong, New China's founding leader.

"Sunflowers are etched in our memories. They are like the poor and starving children wearing patched clothes from my childhood, but we had Mao Zedong then and it was enough," recalled Chinese author Yu Hua, after visiting Xu's studio in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, several years ago.

In the preface to Xu's biography, Sunflower Garden, Yu writes that the plant helped forge a psychological link between the grassroots and their supreme leader at the time, and made the ordinary people feel "close" to Mao.

"The fate of the sunflower in China, which once gained popularity and then lost its glory amid the turbulent times, is similar to the fate of an era," Yu says.

This may explain the wilted and sentimental images of sunflowers created by Xu.

Xu was born in Fujian province. He worked in a factory at age 20 and later majored in oil painting during college. He pursued an advanced education in Germany and returned to China to be an art professor at the China Academy of Art.

More than 100 watercolor paintings, 50 oil paintings, and a series of large-scale sculptures, all under the theme of "East Sunflowers", are displayed at the National Museum of China. The ongoing exhibition, which has received more than 300,000 visitors so far, will run until Nov 18.

Three halls on the museum's second floor display the paper and oil paintings of sunflowers, while 18 colored sunflower-shaped glaze lamps glitter on the ground outside the rooms.

Xu reveals that about 80 percent of the works are being displayed for the first time in Beijing, adding that the show commemorates the 11 years of his sunflower painting. The remaining paintings and installations have been exhibited in a few cities, including Hangzhou, Shanghai, Germany's Koblenz and Washington.

His decadelong fascination with sunflowers started from an unexpected glance at an abandoned sunflower garden on a plain near the Sea of Marmara, during a 2003 tour of Turkey.

"The sunflowers there looked like they were made of cooper and iron, and stood lonely in the ruins. They reminded me of our fates," Xu recalls.

The artist reveals that his fondness of sunflowers even pushes him to protect the plant at his college.

"My students used to raise an artificially cultivated species of sunflower, named 'pig slave', on the grounds of our campus. It could only grow to as high as 40 centimeters. The wild sunflowers grow to an average height of 2 meters," Xu says.

"It betrayed the true nature of sunflowers. I forbade them to grow such a species on campus. The plants deserve respect and should grow in their own way."