Never Tamed: Jennifer Ling Datchuk's Evocative Work Takes on the Personal & Political
The detailed work of trained ceramicist explores the female body and identity
The months have been flying by and I always feel bad for not writing enough here. Lately, I’ve been working on finishing final edits for RIPE before we go into production, finishing a freelance piece, and working on a new project. My body just wants to curl up and hibernate, but I’m trying to make myself go out, see friends, see art.
Anyway! Back to the good stuff.
Today, I’m really excited to release another artist’s spotlight focused on the work of Jennifer Ling Datchuk. I first discovered Jennifer’s work when we became friends on Instagram and I was instantly enthralled.
Based in San Antonio, Jennifer combines what is often considered women’s work — ceramics, textiles, hair extensions, fingernails — to explore issues of the female body, identity, and her own personal history.
The first work I saw of Jennifer’s is one that I never forgot, one that I still think about regularly — the juxtaposition of skin, scars, and gold-gilded ceramics evokes an emotion I always look for in art.
But perhaps the best thing about Jennifer’s work is that she is constantly evolving and shape-shifting. Just as porcelain scattered over scars evokes a deeply emotional response, Datchuk pivots to using the same material in a piece that is both a wink and a nod to the viewer.
Beyond the porcelain work, Jennifer’s newest pieces are even more evolved. In Tame, a video piece, Jennifer’s hair is braided into the shape of a horse bridle. She holds a basket of porcelain “China girl” dolls which rattle every time an anonymous hand pulls her hair, yanking her neck and head back, creating a painful tension that is hard to forget.
One of her recent solo exhibitions at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Later, Longer, Fewer, took its title from a 1970s Chinese propaganda poster encouraging women to take birth control in order to slow down the country’s birth rate. As part of the exhibit, Jennifer installed one of her now-trademark hair extension installations, which frames a neon sign twisting a racist phrase on its head.
Jennifer’s exploration of her body and her identity is not only constantly evolving but it continues to underscore the way personal experience can and does speak to the political, to society as a whole, to the ways in which women who aren’t white are trained, tamed, and reined in. Her work is constantly evocative and a source of inspiration.
I spoke with Jennifer about her work, her materials, and her current inspirations.
Artist Spotlight: Jennifer Ling Datchuk
Sarah Rose Etter: Tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today. How did you begin making art? When did you start making work and what drew you to the practice?
Jennifer Ling Datchuk: Like every dutiful Chinese daughter, I started school as a pre-med or pre-law major. I failed at chemistry so then law became what I wanted to pursue, intrigued by the grey areas of black and white laws in search of social justice. It wasn’t till I took my required art class and I felt something open up in my brain that let creatively in and the possibility of culturally unlearning expectations over dreams.
Clay was for me after I first worked with it. I loved the malleability, potential of the material, and the science and technical aspects of when process meets concept. I have been working with clay since undergraduate and graduate school and since my graduation in 2008 but I probably didn’t introduce myself with the title of artist till a few years ago.
SRE: What are your three biggest influences?
JLD: I am forever influenced by the sisterhood and camaraderie of hair and nail salons, trends and aesthetics of beauty shops, and the history of Chinatowns in the United States.
SRE: What’s the one piece of yours that you love the most?
JLD: I think the love of a specific piece changes over time and feels very much like the cycle of falling in love with a person. So much attraction and interest at the beginning of an idea and all the complicated feelings that happen in the in-between stages of making, to relief that it all worked, and the stage of mourning and loss when the piece leaves you. I would say the piece I loved the most is “Babe Cave '' and consists of a porcelain blue and white decorated table and stools contained in a round curtain of blue synthetic hair. I worked with a porcelain table and stool family factory in Jingdezhen, China where the brothers threw the large tabletop tandemly and their wives cobalt decorated the pieces. In 2018, I was able to work at their studio for 3 days to paint in cobalt blue images of uteruses, chrysanthemum flowers, Venus of Willendorf, and cut peaches.
SRE: What are the main philosophical questions your work is interrogating?
JLD: What are the layers to this story? What elements are personal and political? What is public and what do I keep private?
Babe, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, courtesy of the artist
SRE: Let’s talk about inspirations: What music do you listen to while you are making your work? Are you reading anything inspiring? What other artists are you currently obsessed with? Are you researching anything wild?
JLD: I am currently inspired by an American flag made by Hmong textile artist Xao Yang Lee that was constructed using traditional Hmong needlework and quilting.
I’m inspired by a tour of the Kohler pottery factory by the foreman and he described the slip casting process that requires one to two hundred pounds of liquid clay going into very large and heavy plaster molds. It takes years of training and the casters make hundreds of decisions on every piece. He said it was hard to find and keep good casters because it’s really hard to teach people how to be strong but gentle. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
I’m researching how cats were symbols the suffragettes used in their protest posters and relating that back to the infamous tweet from Representative Matt Gaetz describing Roe protesters as “over educated” and “underloved” and sitting at home alone with their cats.
Currently obsessing over my recent thrift store finds: plastic fitted gingham seat covers for picnic table benches, segmented porcelain plates decorated in blue and white willow ware patterns, and a plastic canvas mesh doorstop in the shape of a brick and crocheted with pink roses.
SRE: Tell us a little about what’s next for you.
JLD: I’m really excited to share the work I made while an artist in residence at the Arts/Industry Residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and Kohler Co. A body of work inspired by being the granddaughter of factory workers. My Chinese grandmother worked in a sewing factory for a major American retailer and my Irish grandmother was one of the first few women to work on the assembly line of General Motors. I am inspired by their stories and how women and immigrant women helped build made in America.
More about Jennifer Ling Datchuk
Jennifer Ling Datchuk was born in Warren, Ohio and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She currently lives and works in San Antonio, Texas. Datchuk holds an MFA in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA in Crafts from Kent State University. Trained in ceramics, her works often use a myriad of materials ranging from porcelain to textiles and synthetic hair. She produces sculpture, performance photography, large scale installations and videos, revolving around gender, race and identity. She has received grants from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio as well as Artpace to research the birthplace of porcelain in Jingdezhen, China. Stemming from personal experience, Datchuk explores her Asian heritage and specifically connects to Chinese blue-and-white porcelain traditions.
In 2016, she was awarded a residency through the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany and was a Black Cube Nomadic Museum Artist Fellow. In 2017 Ling-Datchuk completed a residency at the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands and was awarded the Emerging Voices Award from the American Craft Council. Datchuk was an artist in residence at Artpace, San Antonio in 2019, and in 2020 she was awarded the prestigious United States Artist Fellowship. In 2021 she was named the 2021 Texas State Three-Dimensional Artist.
Datchuk’s work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX.