Xunzhi Sun – Q4 Art Competition

Artist Portfolio Magazine – 2017 Q4 Art Competition

Xunzhi Sun – San Francisco, CA

My name is Xunzhi Sun, from China. I moved to San Francisco in 2015 for an MFA degree in Fine Arts at Academy of Art University and will complete the program this December. I have been using oil, mixed media and printmaking as methods to create my art pieces since my BFA in China.

The pieces that I submitted to this competition are from a series I call “FamilyTree.” In this body of work, I majorly use printmaking (silkscreen and photo gravure) and mixed media, to combine old photographs of my family with Chinese characters, to talk about the subtle ambiguity that I find exist in between each family, not just my own.

I find printmaking and mixed media apt because of their uncontrollable character. It reminds me of the relationships between family members. When I deal with relationships within my family, it is similar to when I use mixed media or printmaking to create images, with half of the things out of my hand. What I can control are elements like colors, materials, composition, and so on, but when I put them together, how the final image is going to appear is not really up to me, because how those single elements are going to affect each others is unpredictable. To me it’s kind of like the situation that happens within families: I try my best to play my role in my family, but results do not always turn out the way that we want.