In order to create the deep black pigment that defines his Hundred Layers of Ink series, Yang Jiechang paints layer over layer of rich black ink over his paper—here building up a textured fingerprint—punctuated by a top layer of shimmering glue. The result is a magnified marker of his identity, one in a set of five large-scale fingerprint paintings. Yang sees himself as a new literati artist, and ink is equally foregrounded here as a part of his identity.

© Yang Jiechang, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva