Casey Chen: Merciful Navigation

The eponymously titled main work Merciful Navigation is an allegorical map illustrating the landscape of a fictional Song Dynasty China (early 12th century CE) in turmoil from armed uprisings by historical rebels Song Jiang and Fang La. Drawing equal parts inspiration from historical, pictorial maps, Chinese folk religion and Hanna Barbera cartoons: Merciful Navigation is a body of work that revisits the archetypal tales from Chinese literature and seeks to resolve them with my understanding of pop-cultural analogues more familiar to us in an irreverent but earnest mashup. Chen aims to pay homage to the rich and enduring history of porcelain craft while subverting the expectations of the audience towards the conventions of the medium.

The real life exploits of these outlaws have been lionised within folk tales and later adapted into the Ming Dynasty novel, The Water Margin – one of the four classics of Chinese literature. The stories and characters are firmly entrenched within the Chinese cultural canon and familiar and well beloved within that society. The plaque with golden lettering spells ‘conducting justice on behalf of Heaven’ – or ‘the will of heaven’ – a popular slogan among peasant uprisings that have sought to overthrow and delegitimise unpopular governments throughout Chinese history. The work illustrates an imagined retelling of The Water Margin but features the same locations of the story, but with a pop-cultural spanner thrown into the works.