A Chinese artist with a traumatic childhood has discovered her female voice in Camberwell and now helps others to heal through art.
When Jin Zhi Yu Ye was born in 1967, in Anhui Province, China, as the fourth girl in a row, her family didn’t want her. “In our culture, girls were seen as a burden,” she explained.
Her grandmother – whom she said raised her – saw her potential and wanted her to learn to read and write, to become what she called “a useful woman.” She said she remembers seeing her grandmother suffer for being a woman: “She was shamed for not being able to provide a son and she had bound feet.”
Footbinding was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls to change their shape and size. Jin Zhi said it was a way to control women by limiting their mobility.
Her final year project explored Chinese female identity and focused on her grandmother’s footbinding.
The culture also emphasises purity and virginity. So when Jin Zhi said she was raped at seven-years-old by a neighbour, she claims her family brutally abused her and she was alienated. “I was treated as a ‘dirty girl’ and tortured. My family were planning for me to marry him when I turned seventeen so no-one would know he raped me. I had to escape.”
Following this traumatic start in life, Jin Zhi suffered PTSD and paranoia.
Her grandma’s insistence that she learn to read and write saved her. “It gave me the imagination to escape the terrible situation I was in,” she said. “I designed and wrote – which helped me to survive.”
Tiny tortoise, suffering from a soft under-developed shell, ‘dumped’ on van bonnet in East Dulwich
In 2004, she came to London with her ex-husband and their daughter. “He taught me a lot about Western art and English culture,” she said.
Jin Zhi studied at Central Saint Martins a few years later. “I had only had three years of education in China, so I know what a privilege it was to study there.
“It gave me the freedom to express where I’m from and rediscover my female identity. Womanhood is something I now celebrate. Living here, I discovered the power of feminism and how open Western culture is.”
She went on to teach art, design and film at University of Arts London as a private teacher, at the different schools around Southwark, including Camberwell College of Arts.
Jin Zhi went through her own healing process, and wants to help others deal with their trauma through art. “I focus on childhood damage. I help my students overcome their harsh backgrounds using art as a therapy.”
In 2013, she started writing her books, which narrate her experience of China from the ‘60s to the ‘90s: an ‘unforgettable’ time of ‘painful’ Chinese cultural revolution. “It was a move from hard-line communism to a form of state capitalism,” she said.
“I’m still waiting for the right publisher that really understands the culture to do it justice.”
Despite the context she grew up in, Chinese culture remains close to her heart. “I love China. And there are parts of the culture I will always celebrate and bring to my art. But staying there was too painful for the trauma I experienced.”
She has found a ‘great international community’ here in London and has been living in Camberwell for the last seventeen years. “For me, Southwark is the most fascinating place to be. I meet a stranger and we can immediately talk about politics, art, music, books. I am lucky to be here.”
Her art will be shown at The BeauVert in Camberwell later this month.
“My purpose is to show that art is not a luxury, but rather part of the big community in Southwark, entering people’s daily life. It has the power to heal our trauma.”
The free exhibition will be held on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November from 11 am-5 pm at The BeauVert, 43 Denmark Hill, Camberwell Green, SE5 8RS.