By Jun Yang, illustrated by Yuuki Nishimura, Verlag für Moderne Kunst, €15 (hardcover)
Reviewed by Nirmala Devi
A catalogue in the form of a children’s book, or a children’s book in the form of a catalogue, The Emperor of China’s Ice explores the myth that inspired Jun Yang’s 2018 contribution to the Austrian Sculpture Park in Graz: a colossal block of ice that was buried in an embankment that winter and excavated in the spring of the following year, to be eaten as a shaved-ice dessert. Japanese picture-book illustrator Yuuki Nishimura shows us the child emperor (who, as in all such myths, reigned ‘a long, long time ago’) sweating under Beijing’s summer heat and, despite the servant fanning him, summoning the empire’s scientists, thinkers and advisers to work out how to get him something cooling to eat on a summer’s day. The problem is solved that winter by filling a box with ice taken from a frozen lake and burying it. It is unearthed – the ice somewhat diminished, but more or less intact – the following summer, at which point shaved-ice desserts are ‘invented’. An annotated map shows us that these delicacies eventually ‘spread’ east to Japan and west to Ancient Rome, while later still Marco Polo brought gelato from China to Italy. The timelines are a bit sketchy – ‘a long, long time ago’ is replaced by ‘more than 2,000 years ago’, followed by fairly precise dates (Italy, 37–68 CE; Japan, eleventh century; China, thirteenth) – and some of the arrows connecting places point both ways, making the sense of any originary shaved-ice moment rather vague. But perhaps that’s fitting for an Austrian artist of Chinese birth who spends his time between Vienna, Taipei and Yokohama (where his two daughters live and whence the interest in Japanese picture books derives). The book’s simple format certainly helps maintain the simplicity of the work’s conceptual origins, while allowing a touch of the fairytale in case anyone takes it too literally. Most deliciously, it makes an analytical text by the sculpture park’s director, Elisabeth Fiedler (‘Jun Yang – The Emperor of China’s Ice. Between Myth, history and cliché’) look redundant and out of place. Yum.
From the Spring 2020 issue of ArtReview Asia
