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，美籍华裔艺术家马文(Jennifer Wen Ma)接手了日本新泻县(Niigata)的一个陶瓷窑。在她的作品《你不会总知道自己将去何方。但是你知道自己去过哪里吗？》(You Can’t Always See Where You Are Going, But Can You See Where You’ve Been?)中，她把倾斜的窑炉中灌满黑色墨水，之后把周围的植被染上颜色。自那之后，她从水墨画的角度不断重新审视这个世界。马文以油画画家的身份开始职业生涯，但她很快发现自己越来越着迷于水墨的魅力。