Remarkable tale of a Chinese soldier turned New York street artist's 9/11 tribute
Yang Yi tells Rong Xiaoqing why he spent five years painting the 343 Fire Department workers who died at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001
I was born in 1957 in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, where my father was an administrator at the Institute of Technology, and my mother taught chemistry. I have two brothers. One is a doctor in New York, the other a scientist in Canada. But I always loved art. Some childhood friends I painted with became famous artists, such as political pop master Wang Guangyi, and the president of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, Wei Ershen.
We were all influenced by the revolutionary-realism style of the Soviet Union back then. But Wang started to experiment with avant-garde style in the mid-1980s. He invited me to join him. I declined because I had just spent 10 years in the army as a soldier artist, and I couldn't tolerate the ambiguity of that style. In hindsight, I may have missed a big opportunity. But everyone has a different fate. Maybe that was my fate.
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After I was discharged from the army, I worked as an art editor for a magazine. It was a good job because I had plenty of time to paint. I won awards in national and local art competitions and had my own exhibitions. Gradually people started to know my name. (Food and drink conglomerate) Nestle even commissioned me to illustrate their brochures. Everything was going from good to even better. But, in 1995, my brother in the United States invited me to join him.
I had always thought individualism was dominant in American culture and that Americans were self-centred. But 9/11 showed me how much people care about their country.
When I arrived, I found a job at a gallery in Manhattan drawing small landscapes. I didn't like to be pushed by the owner to draw as quickly as a machine - I had spent months on a painting to make it perfect when I was in China. So I quit after half a year. I started to draw portraits for tourists, at first in Central Park, then at Times Square. That's how I have been making a living. In those days, the Chinese artists working on the street were quite good. Nowadays, new immigrants who have no artistic sense are drawing portraits on the street here. I don't mention my achievements in China to them.
When 9/11 happened, I was in bed because I had worked late the previous night. When a friend called and told me what had happened, I thought he was joking. But when I turned on the TV, my jaw dropped.
A month after 9/11, I went to work at a shopping mall in upstate New York. So many people came to me holding pictures of their loved ones who had died at Ground Zero and asked me to do portraits. That experience changed my view of Americans. I had always thought individualism was dominant in American culture and that Americans were self-centred. But 9/11 showed me how much people care about their country.