The Dog Scroll
This is the artist statement for the Dog scroll, one of 12 paintings that make up the artwork series “The Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: we owe you no apologies” created in May of 2021 as a part of Springboard for the Arts’ Artists Respond: Equitable Rural Futures.
The Dog Scroll is about patriarchy in familial systems and dutiful loyalty of women.
The Dog Scroll
The painting itself measures 27” x 40”, but in its final form mounted to silk brocade, it unravels to 3’ x 6’. The painting depicts a medium-sized short-haired dog outlined in black ink in a seated position with a purple collar attached to a matching leash that lies limp at its feet. Beneath the dog is swaths of green ground representative of ‘greener pastures. Surrounding the dog is a background of hollow blue curve-stroked sky representative of my Chinese maternal grandmother’s dementia, or, more broadly, a liminal state of spirit and soul.
My family raised me to believe that, of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, the Dog represents loyalty, honesty, good work ethic and faithfulness. My grandmother was born in the year of the Dog and this scroll speaks to the complexity of the strengths and restrictions that result from exemplifying the characteristics of the Dog.
My grandparents arrived on US soil in 1997 to help my mother raise me and my older brother after my father passed away in 1996. By the time they came to America, they were in their retirement years having lived full lives and fulfilled life-long careers in China.
Due to the tragedies and traumas my grandparents endured, stories shared with me about their lives in China were sparse during my upbringing and my mom taught from an early age not to ask too many questions about their lives. Though I didn’t understand why my childhood curiosity couldn’t be quenched at the time, I did understand that communication with my Mandarin fluent grandparents was limited to the elementary Mandarin I could utter and the ‘broken English’ they were in the process of learning. The language barrier alone boundaried our conversations to topics of food, health and physical happiness.
Despite never speaking a common tongue, I’m really close to my grandparents - my grandfather especially. They played a pivotal role in raising me and I have internalized a great reverence for the generations before me because of them.
Every Sunday we would spend making family meals together. From dumplings to noodles to steamed bao to cuisines I’ll never be able to pronounce, cooking was a family affair and we each understood our role in the process or production line.
My grandmother is a creature of her cultural conditioning. My mother, brother and I had all assimilated to Midwestern Minnesota culture to varying degrees, but not my grandmother. Everything about her way of being in the world was carried over from her lifetime in mainland China. Her mornings always started off with tai chi, either in her apartment or outside on the greenspace in front of her apartment building. Her afternoons always included a short nap to recharge, and her bedtime routine was never complete without washing her feet in a small basin.
My perception of my grandmother is that the type of woman that knows her place and wife that brings honor to her family.
In China, men are considered the head of the household and women are expected to be obedient and subservient. Though in my experience, my grandfather is a gentle and gracious man, I must admit I am ignorant to the type of man he was throughout his first 50+ years of life. What I will say is that I observed my grandmother be led by my grandfather in almost all decisions and my understanding is that’s how their dynamic has always been.
When my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, my mother stepped in as her primary care-giver. Over the past decade her mental state has shifted to one less anchored in the present and she often asks repeated and tiresome questions as a form of grasping at her ‘reality.’ In the early years of her diagnosis, almost all of her questions were related to my grandfather when he wasn’t in her immediate surroundings.
This painting is a snapshot of the standstill I see my grandmother in. I painted the dog as a representation of my grandmother’s way of being determined by her dementia. The dog’s collar and leash are symbols of patriarchal control and conditioning of women; the limp leash lying on the green grass represents her life of “freedom” in the United States (as opposed to her previous life in China under Communist rule); and the seated position of the dog juxtaposed with the hollow hazy blue sky represent the purgatory period she’s frozen in - between the physical realm, the spiritual realm, and her mental realm of ‘reality’ that is so strongly tethered to the synaptic connections formed through cultural conditioning during her formative years.
This painting speaks to the ways immigrant people and women, especially, revert to the ‘muscle memory’ of our socio-cultural conditioning when our mental faculties are no longer anchored in the ‘reality’ of the physical present due to dementia.
Nancy X. Valentine is a fiscal year 2022 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
