In 2009, the Chinese-American artist Jennifer Wen Ma took over a pottery kiln in Japan’s Niigata prefecture. For her piece “You Can’t Always See Where You Are Going, But Can You See Where You’ve Been?”, she flooded the sloping chambers of the kiln with black ink, and then drenched the surrounding vegetation in the pigment. Since then Ma, who began her career as an oil painter but soon found the discipline of ink wash increasingly attractive, has repeatedly revisited a vision of the world as an ink painting.
2009年，美籍華裔藝術家馬文(Jennifer Wen Ma)接手了日本新瀉縣(Niigata)的一個陶瓷窯。在她的作品《你不會總知道自己將去何方。但是你知道自己去過哪裏嗎？》(You Can’t Always See Where You Are Going, But Can You See Where You’ve Been?)中，她把傾斜的窯爐中灌滿黑色墨水，之後把周圍的植被染上顏色。自那之後，她從水墨畫的角度不斷重新審視這個世界。馬文以油畫畫家的身份開始職業生涯，但她很快發現自己越來越着迷於水墨的魅力。