A monodrama is a theatrical play acted or designed to be acted by a single actor/actress. Being the only character portrayed in such play, that person performs as she or he triggers dramatic tension to emerge in between audience and themselves. Such tension is where theatricality grows, and it cultivates the emotional exchange while breaking the physical distance between the performer and the viewer.

Different from other types of theatrical plays, monodrama is empowered by only one person who possesses a prepared script facing audience members that can generate unpredictable reactions. Strength of the tension could testify whether or not the drama accomplishes its theatrical essence or not.

Yifan’s Monodra(w)ma captures not only figures in the play, but also the production components, including the set design, props and lighting. The artist herself along with the audience, becomes one of the onlookers.

The “loneliness” is fundamental to Yifan’s work. It characterizes the world she depicts, in which a state of “separation” expressed by all the props in act. Though they occupy the same space but shy away from each other with a noticeable, but also blurred distance. A figure, a flooding scene, clustered mountains, a mirror, chairs, all together establish and concretize the existing everyday system. Yet the “separation” allows spectators to experience an escape from the daily, like it is in the post-apocalypse.

Meanwhile, the state of “separation” extends beyond the stage. The red curtain marks the physical barrier between the audience and the play. Looking at Yifan’s work as spectators, audience quietly observes from a distance but are not encouraged to participate in the drama as it might intervene the “separation”.

Jiang Yifan’s work embodies the traditional artistic conception of ink painting, also encompasses quite modern approaches that are comparably straightforward to speak to the current circumstance while the veiled and ineffable meaning is present.

I regard Yifan’s very personal yet unique way of depicting as a direction that may lead contemporary ink painting out of its self-defining maze.