Biography
Jasmin Sian is a New York–based artist renowned for her delicate, labor-intensive works on paper. Sian begins by gathering discarded paper from New York City streets and subsequently transforms this found material—gum or lollipop wrappers, deli bags and donut bags—into exquisitely intricate cut-paper constructions. Using specialized Japanese blades, she makes careful incisions in the paper, and then, with a single-hair brush, creates miniature renderings of plants, birds, and animals in gouache, graphite, and ink. Recalling doilies or fragments of lace, the finished works memorialize specific encounters or moments in time, such as a dog playing in a field or chipmunks foraging on a branch. Sian imbues these quotidian scenes with wonderment and transcendence—a sense of awe at the everyday.
Born in the Philippines, Sian moved to Texas at age 13, studying first at the University of Houston before receiving MFA in 1998 from Parsons School of Design in New York. Since the late 1990s, Sian has worked from her small home studio near Times Square. Urban wildlife, plants in city parks, and her pet bird Matsu are constant subjects of inspiration and depiction. Though her process is exacting, requiring time and attention, Sian’s works overtly reveal her process, made manifest in tiny irregularities and imperfections. This residue of the artist’s hand—a record of her labor—brings her work palpably, powerfully to life. Ultimately, Sian’s work makes a case for decoration, for ornament. A quiet refutation of Western minimalism, her gossamer arabesques and floriated lines reflect an ethos, derived from her Catholic upbringing in the Philippines, that the more you embellish something, the more you have honored that thing.
