But she will not be going quietly, as she is spending her final months planning a big exhibit. And it’s not easy getting an appointment with a weekly schedule as packed as hers. Texts have to be written, the catalogue is nearly finished, and there’s an exciting finale in store. Schlombs has also invited five contemporary artists from Korea, Japan, and China. All of them, beams Schlombs, are absolutely wonderful artists.
At 82 years old, Qiu Shihua is the oldest of the five. Schlombs has always admired his monochrome paintings at Cologne’s Galerie Karsten Greve: landscapes, extremely reduced to nuanced white hues that the Chinese artist applies to canvas or paper in layers via laser. “Painting on the edge of visibility,” as Qiu Shihua himself accurately describes it.
Leiko Ikemura is also among them. Schlombs dedicated a big exhibit to the artist – born in Japan and living in Berlin – at the Museum for East-Asian Art in 2015. Ikemura’s monumental sculpture of a friendly protector goddess with a white skirt and rabbit hears has since been permanently housed in the museum foyer. This upcoming exhibit will show her horizon paintings on burlap.
Schlombs will supplement the works of all five artists with a carefully selected historical object from the respective country in the museum’s own collection. Does she see her final exhibit as a sort of summary of three decades? Perhaps a little, says Schlombs, but it’s much more than that – it will show how these artists create art from the boundless wealth of their own culture, history, and traditions. The exhibit will illustrate how they revise the old, invent the new, and create something of their own.
One stellar example is Kimsooja, whose works with Bottari have also been presented at “documenta” in Kassel. These are modelled after sacks worn in the artist’s home country of Korea for centuries. Kimsooja uses traditional wedding blankets with lucky symbols, holding used clothing, for her artistic reinterpretation of these sacks. Topics like migration and lack of a homeland are prevalent in her installations and videos, as are questions of identity in our globalised world. Schlombs found that the symbols on the colourful blankets that Kimsooja uses are similar to those on a Korean wedding gift box, and will present this precious item from the 15th century next to Kimsooja’s modern works at the exhibit.
Artists in modern East Asia are far more confident, says Schlombs. They have long since ceased looking westward for inspiration. “Those times are over.” Now, she says, people are more drawn to their homegrown traditions. Take Evelyn Taocheng Wang, for example. She writes, paints, and draws stories on lengths of paper similar to ancient Chinese horizontal scrolls. Evelyn Taocheng Wang expresses 21st-century issues on paper with traditional techniques and painting styles.
Non-European art had long been seen as the also-ran of the art world. Yet the Western-centric canon is becoming increasingly unstable, while the world is becoming increasingly aware of East Asian art and culture. Schlombs witnessed this development, and does not believe that an end to this is in sight.
26-year-old Yu Duan, the youngest among the five contemporary artists, places cultures on an even playing field. As a Chinese student in London, he took his camera on explorations of private gardens – and brought this idea home with him to the rural regions of southern China. The results, however, were entirely different: Yu Duan’s unique shots don’t show the carefully tended grass of large European cities, but rather the natural, casual, unnoticed greenery – everyday greenery that, to people in China, simply comes with the land.
As for Schlombs, she wants to spend more time out in nature as well. She’s looking forward to this, having lacked the time for her own garden. But, of course, she will not be absent from the building at the Aachener Weiher. For example, she will still be present in the many catalogues that she was able to publish as Director, or in the museum’s unique logo. It was created by a prominent seal cutter at the Palace Museum in Beijing, and she remains enthralled by its friendly, open style. “This red seal on white paper – can anything be more beautiful?”