<aside>
Audio Summary 🎤
Tan Mu_ Ocean, Sky, and Cosmos (1).wav
</aside>
This document is an artist's biography detailing Tan Mu's life and artistic development. Her work is deeply influenced by her family history, particularly their connections to the sea and sky, and her passion for freediving. These experiences, combined with her formal art education and exploration of diverse media like printmaking and programming, inform her multidisciplinary artistic practice. The biography highlights key mentors and inspirations, tracing her evolution from traditional painting to incorporating technology and interdisciplinary collaborations. Finally, it lists some of her related artworks, categorized by theme and inspiration.
(word-count: 3967**)**
From the moment Tan Mu picked up a paintbrush at the age of five, a profound connection with art began to shape her life. What started as a childhood curiosity blossomed into a lifelong exploration of creativity, where each stroke of paint became a journey into memory, identity, and the vast interconnectedness of the world around her. Emphasizing the themes of connection and continuity that underscore our shared human experience, her practice reveals the subtle threads linking individual and collective narratives. Her art, much like her life, is a archive to the connection and complexities of existence, weaving together the tangible and intangible, the personal and the universal.
October 25, 1998. Courtesy of the artist.
January 3, 2002. Courtesy of the artist.
Hometown
Tan Mu’s connection with the ocean runs as deep as its hidden depths, rooted in both her upbringing and family history. Tan Mu grew up by the seaside in Shandong, where her family shared a deep connection with sailing and windsurfing. Her mother, a professional windsurfer, was part of China’s first windsurfing team in the 1980s. Tan Mu spent her childhood exploring the ocean, often venturing out on sailboats with her family. These experiences nurtured her lifelong fascination with the sea's beauty, mystery, and its intricate connection to life and memory.
Tan Mu by the seaside in her hometown, August 9, 1992. Courtesy of the artist.
Oceanography
This sense of wonder was further shaped by her upbringing in Yantai, a seaside city where she was profoundly influenced by her paternal grandfather, a marine engineer whose expertise in harbor design and land reclamation brought her into intimate contact with the complex, often unseen world of oceanic infrastructure. From an early age, she was exposed to the intricate blueprints and bathymetric contour lines that mapped the seafloor, offering her a glimpse into the ocean's hidden architecture.
Tan Mu with her mother by the seaside in her hometown, August 9, 1992. Courtesy of the artist.
These images left an indelible mark, reshaping her perception of the sea. For Tan Mu, the ocean became more than just a vast body of water—it evolved into a living, dynamic space teeming with invisible information, unspoken narratives, and latent mysteries. Her grandfather’s work taught her to view the ocean not only as a physical entity but also as a reservoir of untold stories and unseen forces, a concept that continues to influence her art today. The engineering precision of her grandfather’s blueprints became a metaphor for her artistic process, where she navigates between visible and invisible realms, exploring how the sea, like memory and information, carries both tangible and intangible legacies.
Overseas Maritime Trade