“I make art so that I can tolerate my own existence.”
Born: Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, 1977
Yan Baishen’s father worked in a top-secret military factory on the Loess Plateau, in northwestern China. Sequestered from the rest of the nation, his family were untouched by the changes that swept through it in the 1980s and ’90s. It wasn’t until they moved to the city that he encountered modernity. Ketchup is part of a trilogy of animations based on the artist’s childhood memories.
