Ju Duoqi

The Vegetable Museum

In the summer of ’06, I bought several kilograms of peas, and sat there quietly for two days peeling them, before stringing them on a wire and turning them into a skirt, a top, a headdress and a magic wand. I used a remote control to take a photo of myself in them, and named it Pea Beauty Pageant. That was my first work of vegetable art.

In the two years that followed, I often dressed up as a housewife, leisurely strolling to the market in a serious search for fun. I would often pace in front of the vegetable stalls, picking things up, thinking and putting them back, trying to figure out which positions made them more interesting. The different types, shapes and colors of the vegetables, with a bit of rearranging, can make for a rich source of imagery. Fresh, withered, rotting, dried, pickled, boiled, fried, they all come out different. I no longer needed a model, as they all became actors and even props. As a director, I directed them to restage La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, and called it La Liberté Guidant les Légumes. As a Chinese woman in this internet age, what I present to people is this kind of world famous painting. Against that fiery fried-egg backdrop, this woman who emanates onion smells from her breast and carries a spring onion spear in her left hand and a wood ear flag in her right, draped in a tofu skin robe, leads the vegetable people forward. The yam soldiers, with their bewildering little round eyes raise a cabbage banner. Having figured out what moving forward means, have they lost their momentum? Each of the potato-head soldiers has a different expression, not sure of their bearing, perhaps surprised, but that is definitely a completely unadorned potato. You wouldn’t know them any better if they were chopped into French fries and covered in ketchup, but when placed in the picture, they all appear unfamiliar and rich in facial expression. On the ground lies the body of a winter melon soldier, with rotting ketchup flowing out of his body like blood. The battleground is strewn with rotting vegetable leaves. This great story of history, this world-famous painting, here becomes completely absurd. How do you approach this famous painting, do you really know its historical background? Do you know what meaning the painter wished to convey? I believe that the world is the world as I understand it, and none other.

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. A housewife, who doesn’t have to get up in the morning, wakes up at two a.m. to fry up the carrot that just served as Napoleon’s head. As a medium that decodes time, photography is my favorite. 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. I never leave the house, and when I do I rarely travel more than 15 kilometers. 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.

See the artist's CV

The Vegetable Museum - 01, Ju Duoqi, 2008

Liberty Leading the Vegetables

C-Print Size A: 120x166cm  Edition:6  Size B: 84x116cm  Edition:12

The Raft of the Lotus Roots

C-Print Size A: 127x180cm  Edition:6  Size B: 89x126cm  Edition:12

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Pickled Cabbage

C-Print Size A: 150x180cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x120cm  Edition:12

The Third of May 2008

C-Print Size A: 120x150cm  Edition:6  Size B: 80x100cm  Edition:12

The Last Supper with the Gingermen

C-Print Size A: 95x180cm  Edition:6  Size B: 63x120cm  Edition:12

Pickled Cucumber on the Volga

C-Print Size A: 118x240cm  Edition:6  Size B: 80x168cm  Edition:12

Napoleon on Potatos

C-Print Size A: 150x120cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x80cm  Edition:12

Mona Tofu

C-Print Size A: 150x100cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x67cm  Edition:12

The Kiss of the Radishes

C-Print Size A: 150x150cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x100cm  Edition:12

The Birthday of the Eggplants

C-Print Size A: 137x180cm  Edition:6  Size B: 91x120cm  Edition:12

Cabbage Monroe

C-Print Size A: 90x65cm  Edition:6  Size B: 60x43cm  Edition:12

The Birth of the Gingerman

C-Print Size A: 180x115cm  Edition:6  Size B: 120x77cm  Edition:12

The Scream of the Sweet Potatos

C-Print Size A: 150x110cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x73cm  Edition:12

The Dream of the Tofu

C-Print Size A: 150x100cm  Edition:6  Size B: 90x60cm  Edition:12

Picasso with Onions and Noodles

C-Print Size A: 120x90cm  Edition:6  Size B: 80x60cm  Edition:12

Van Gogh made of Leek

C-Print Size A: 120x100cm  Edition:6  Size B: 90x67cm  Edition:12

The Death of the Cabbage Head

C-Print Size A: 150x101cm  Edition:6  Size B: 100x71cm  Edition:12

The Sleeping Taroman

C-Print Size A: 116x180cm  Edition:6  Size B: 77x120cm  Edition:12

The Birth of the Radish

C-Print Size A: 127x218cm  Edition:6  Size B: 85x145cm  Edition:12