Passage

Tawainese American artist, James Jean, fuses contemporary subjects with aesthetic techniques inspired by traditional Chinese scroll paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and Renaissance portraiture. 

This print features 15 different metallic colors applied with a proprietary chine-collé technique developed especially for this edition. The design of the boat in Passage is based on the reed boats of Lake Titicaca, Peru made by the Uros indigenous people. The Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, built a series of reed boats, one of which was constructed by boat builders from Lake Titicaca, to demonstrate that ancient civilizations could have migrated and traded across the vast oceans. While also being a nod to The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault, the characters in the boat represent an overflow of cultural archetypes that are cast adrift in a geo-politicized ocean that allows for economic trade but deems dangerous the export and import of humanity and culture. This edition is signed, dated and numbered by James Jean.