Chinese artist Yu Duoki aka Ju Duoqi has an astonishing ability to recreate world-famous paintings in an edible fashion by from using all kinds of vegetables to get the effect she wants. Born in 1973 in Chongqing, China, she graduated from the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in 1996, and has, since 2005 been working as freelance artist. The former website and computer game designer turned artist has been creating about 2 vegetable sculptures a month since 2006.
She first started working with vegetables in the summer of 2006, when she spent two days peeling a few kilograms of peas, before stringing them on a wire and transforming them in a skirt, a top, a headdress and a magic wand. This was her first experience of creating vegetable art, and it was called Pea Beauty Pageant.
Since then , Ju Duoqi has spent a lot of time going to the vegetable market, having discovered that the different colors and textures of vegetables offere a rich source of imagery. She further discovered that cooking the vegetables in various ways, or leaving them to rot made them even more interesting. She no longer needed models for her artworks, as the vegetables could easily be used as models and props alike.
Sichuan-born Ju carefully assembles her works with toothpicks, taking up to 2 weeks to complete a single recreation of some of the world’s most famous works in photographs. These ’simple techniques’ pay Ju’s bills, as photos go for between $1,500 to $2,000 US each. Her organic version of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Munroe fashioned from cabbage and a spring onion sold very quickly to a foreign buyer.
Ju recreates old masters like La Liberte Guidant le Peuple. She used rotting ketchup for blood, potatoes as soldiers and rotting vegetables as background.. She hardly ever leaves her home, and when she does she rarely travels for over 15 km, so she created her vegetable art for all women who love their home. She considers it an environmental way of bringing art and life together.
Ju says of her incredible artwork that – “I am happy that I have found a way of life for women who love the home. I have found an environmental way of bringing work and life together. From imagination to reconstruction and postproduction, it burns through tons of boring hours. Everything has a spirit, each vegetable, each person, and each second, under careful observation, has extraordinary meaning. What makes me happy is that when I see Napoleon on his Potato, I can think back to when I fried him up and ate him at two in the morning in the summer of ’08. Through photographs, memory becomes sentiment. In a studio, with a knife, a box of toothpicks and some vegetables, I can make small sculptures and slap together big scenes, using a woman’s most effortless and thrifty method of fantasizing about the larger world”.
This astoundingly talented, yet simple woman has given something truly memorable to the world of art, and it can be no surprise that her work is gaining in recognition and reputation all over the world. There is undoubtedly a lot more to come from this immensely talented lady in future years, and we can be certain that it will well worth waiting for, whatever she comes up with.
http://www.parisbeijingphotogallery.com/main/juduoqi/12.jpg
Information sources
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/ju-duoqi-the-queen-of-vegetable-art.html
http://larryfire.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/pea-casso-vegetable-art-by-ju-duoqi/
http://www.linesandcolors.com/2010/09/10/the-vegetable-museum-ju-duoqi/
