Artist Statement

Elaine Fancy Photography

Avant Garde | 218 Merton Street, Toronto

Public gallery hours: Thursday, October 17th - 31st, 2024, 10–4 p.m.

Jocelyn Teng (b. 1987, Taiwan) is proud to present Mountain Child (catalogue), her first exhibition of paintings. In this suite of sixteen large-scale works of acrylic on canvas, Teng translates her memories of an early childhood spent in the mountains of southern Taipei from the confident perspective of a woman rooted in her power.

Shortly after Teng was born, her father, a full-time artist and children’s theatre director, moved the family away from the hard, bustling city to the lush, languid jungle, where they lived in a handmade house among farmers and monks.

With no television in the house, Teng’s world was instead framed by the view from her windows. In the nearby ravine, the heavy air hung in a thick fog caused by the region’s frequent typhoons.

Through this veil of heavy mist, she gazed out onto a moody vista of greens, greys, browns, and blues. She glimpsed the peaks of soaring mountains. She heard the buzz of insects, the plaintive croaks of frogs, the warbles and trills of birdsong, and the murmur of sounds of indiscernible origin. In a village wrapped in the soft cocoon of constant humidity, the clean scent of wood, earth, and fresh rain kept her senses sharp.

Her first exposure to art was in this environment. Trekking down winding mountain paths with stacks of rice paper and boxes of watercolours, her family would while away happy afternoons making pictures in the ravine.

Many years later, after relocating to Vancouver and then Toronto, Teng embarked upon a career in fashion design and illustration. For her graduation project at university, she took a roll of canvas, painted it, then stitched it together to create wearable art. She spent a decade in the fashion industry, achieving success that took her around the world working for prominent designers and high-profile companies.

But something kept tugging her back to where it all began. The mountain fog seeped in through the cracks until she could no longer deny its presence. In 2022, after becoming a mother to her son, Jordan, she knew there were memories of her own childhood that she had to reckon with and confront.

Wielding her paintbrush in her studio, she is able to capture the dreamlike surrounds of the forest she remembers from her youth, in the manner of a lepidopterist pinning down an elusive butterfly.

Director: Kyla Zanardi

Videographer: Miguel Arenillas

Her process is intuitive and generative. Like a mountain towering over a ravine, she stands above an expanse of blank canvas laid out onto the floor. Then, like the weather, she splashes down bursts of colour, dragging them across the landscape with brushes and cloths before adding precise details with delicate ribbons of oil pastel and crayon.

Sometimes her compositions are stormy: In I Dreamt Big, the swirling, gestural application of blue, white, and black conjures a river tumbling and crashing over smooth rocks. Sometimes the pace is more meditative: In Rearranging My Mind, Teng’s pigment ripples out in calm billows, like drops of ink in water. Always there is movement in the pursuit of finding balance and harmony.

Mountain Child is a considered and evocative exhibition of paintings. Each work is a courageous exposition of vulnerability from an artist with a distinct and unique point of view. In Teng’s compositions, we witness uncertainty coalescing into confidence and appreciate the complexity of how beauty exists in chaos. We are reminded that the state of impermanence is life’s only reliable constant, and that like water, like fog, the journey of self-discovery is always in flux.

Joining the suite of abstracts are two figurative works in a complementary palette – self-portraits inspired by a picture Teng’s mother drew for her one night when she was a child. These faces emerge from their backgrounds like figures coming into focus through fog, asserting their presence. They seem to know something that we are only just starting to realize: into this space, a child has moved a mountain. 

Mountain Child catalogue here.

– Rosie Prata, 2024

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