Hommage To DING 向丁天缺致敬

I became acquainted with the work of Ding Tianque (1916-2013) at the very gallery where my Carpe Diem exhibition took place. The owner ofICI-Labas, Mimi Ding, is in fact his niece. Tianque had a very eventful life that reflects perfectly the complex history of China in the 20 th century. I fell in love with his art when I first saw some of his pieces. And I have always been fascinated by the fact that, although his life was far from easy, his paintings appear to be full of joy. In this self-portrait, which is an homage to Ding, wearing one of my flashy stripy shirts and a French beret (I have seen pictures of Ding wearing one), I am paying respect to one of Ding ’s oil paintings, saluting and lowering down my head. Ding’s painting depicts three dolls performing on a chair improvised as a stage. I used sand to fill the background of my painting and added colourful fireworks-like dots to symbolize intellectual and emotional stimulation. A celebration of life and meaningful encounters!

 我是在举办“Carpe Diem”展览的同一个画廊里认识丁天缺（1916-2013）的作品的。 ICI-Labas的创始人Mimi Ding实际上是他的侄女。天缺的生活非常丰富多彩，完美地 反映了20世纪中国复杂的历史。我第一次看到他的一些作品时就爱上了他的艺术。我 一直对这样一个事实感到着迷：尽管他的生活远非易事，但他的画作却充满了欢乐。 在这幅向丁天缺致敬的自画像中，我穿着我的一件花哨的条纹衬衫和法国贝雷帽（我 看过丁天缺戴贝雷帽的照片），我在向丁天缺的一幅油画致敬，鞠躬并低头致敬。丁 天缺的画作描绘了三个玩偶在椅子上即兴表演，椅子被当作舞台。我用沙子填充了我 这幅画的背景，并添加了像彩色烟花一样的点，以象征智力和情感的刺激。这是对生 命和有意义的相遇的庆祝！

BIODATA - 艺术家简介

A renowned scholar in the field of intercultural communication and education, Fred Dervin (Chinese name: 文德 Wende) is also an artist. He holds two PhDs (Sorbonne University in Paris and University of Turku, Finland), is a full professor and PhD supervisor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.  Dervin also holds several distinguished and visiting professorships in Australia, Canada, China, Luxembourg, Malaysia and Sweden, as well as in other Finnish universities. Dervin has published internationally on questions of identity, interculturality and mobility/migration (over 150 articles and 80 books). His interest in art began when he was a teenager and has continued to grow over the decades. Over the past decade, he has produced artworks in China and Finland to showcase his scientific ideas. His commitment to the arts has also influenced his personal research (e.g. the benefits of arts education for intercultural communication). For decades he has collected and specialized in Finnish art from the mid-20th century and since 2015 he has been actively involved in producing his own art in relation to his research work. In his 2022 book entitled Interculturality in Fragments: A Reflexive Approach (Springer), he included 10 of his works of art to stimulate his readers to think beyond words about intercultural communication and education. He is just about to publish a book on art and interculturality in education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Dervin is interested in the complexity of depicting faces in his art work by using different techniques. Interestingly, the Finnish word "face", "kasvot", always appears in the plural, which piqued his curiosity about the human face. This interest also comes from his scientific research on identity and intercultural communication, as well as his experience of living in different parts of the world.

文德是世界跨文化教育领域的知名学者，同时还是一位优秀的艺术家。他拥有法国索邦大学和芬兰图尔库大学两所世界知名古老院校的博士学位。现担任芬兰赫尔辛基大学的终身教授及博士生导师，同时还在世界各国及地区担任荣誉教授和客座教授。他发表了超过150篇学术性文章和80余部学术专著，探讨关于身份、跨文化交流与教育、流动迁移等社会问题。他对艺术的兴趣始于青少年时期，经过多年的积累形成了自己独特的艺术风格。在过去的十几年中，他在中国与芬兰这两个他热爱的土地上创作了许多带有鲜明个人特色的作品。同时，他将艺术创作与个人学术研究相结合，并放入个人著作中，以帮助读者更好地理解和思考研究背后的故事和意义。特别是近一年间，他对脸和镜子进行了细致地观察和理解，并创作了许多富有内涵和想象力的创作，这些作品部分也将会出现在他明年的著作中。