Rich material is the indispensable material basis for human production and life. They are always around us and integrated with us. Although the first attribute of material is its materiality, it will inevitably reflect some specific social and cultural attributes after being collected, processed, and used by human beings. Especially when the artist chooses a material as the expression medium for artistic creation, the material completes the information transformation from object image to heart image with the support and promotion of individual emotion. At that moment, the material has life and language, presents a meaningful visual form externally and internally, contains the harmonious unity of art, human nature, and material nature. Each artist has his preferred materials, for Qi Yahong, the favorite one is felted material. Felt is a sheet-like cloth obtained by extruding animal wool in a hot and humid state. It can be used for many purposes, such as cushion blankets, clothing, shoes and hats, shock-absorbing material, and others. Human beings have an ancient history of using felt, which can be said to be the earliest form of cloth, which also makes felt materials naturally have a sense of historical precipitation across past and present times.
According to different animal wool, felt also has different types and material properties. The wool felt used in this creation is such a unique material for the artist personally. The wool felt is soft and elastic, not easy to fold and deform, and has rich color and plasticity. It is an ideal artistic creation material used to make plane felt painting or shape three-dimensional modeling works.
The works exhibited in this exhibition extend Qi Yahong's innovative research on the theme of the male human body and hair performance for a long time. It is also an expansion experiment of the series of graduation works of her doctoral students with the same theme.
Wool felt fabric has no characteristics of warp and weft forming of knitted fabric, so Qi Yahong can use it to express the delicate and subtle character skin texture. Its rich color lets her express the color change of skin as smoothly as painting, and its excellent stacking plasticity can better show the subtle body fluctuation and hair characteristics.
Most importantly, Qi Yahong believes that wool felt materials have mysterious perceptual characteristics and emotional healing functions. Therefore, she likes to use all kinds of wool felt products, filled with the corners of her life all the time. At the same time, the artist hopes to convey this unique emotional feeling by using the works created by wool felt. Through the color, shape, texture, and touch of wool felt works, Qi Yahong can send out some unconditional softness and warmth, make people feel the filling of emotion, and experience the freshness of life and the temperature of human feelings in art.