When Cultural Heritage Is No Longer Only About the Past

On 11 August 2025, Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po published a feature on the artistic practice of Ye Yongrun. Ye has practised Chinese painting and calligraphy for more than six decades. He is best known for his ink paintings of shrimp, but his work also includes bamboo, flowers and birds, landscapes, figures and pandas. In recent years, he has extended his brush language beyond paper to porcelain and glass, while also taking part in a collaborative traditional-lantern project.

The significance of this development lies in more than an artist’s decision to work with new materials. It raises a broader question: how can a traditional artistic language continue to develop in the present?

Discussions of cultural heritage usually begin with preservation. Historic buildings require maintenance, objects require conservation, archives must be organised, and traditional skills must be recorded and passed on. None of this can be replaced. Yet cultural heritage is not simply a collection of completed achievements waiting to be protected. Many forms now regarded as traditional were themselves shaped through generations of adaptation, experimentation and refinement.

Ye has not left ink painting simply because he now works on porcelain. What has changed is the material that carries his artistic language. On paper, the artist works primarily with the relationship between brush, ink, water and surface. Porcelain introduces glaze, temperature and firing into that relationship. In underglaze blue and copper-red works in particular, colour changes under intense heat, and the final image cannot be determined by the brush alone. Firing is therefore not merely a technical process that follows the painting; it is part of how the work comes into being.

This distinguishes the porcelain works from paintings transferred unchanged onto another surface. Ye must retain the discipline and judgement of ink painting while accepting the transformations introduced by material and fire. The image is not simply reproduced. It is formed again under different conditions.

The Wen Wei Po feature also notes Ye’s wish to bring art into more homes. This aspiration is closely connected to his choice of media. Porcelain, glass and lanterns already belong to domestic spaces, public festivals and everyday cultural experience. They can enter a study, a living room, a tea setting or a community celebration, rather than being encountered only in an exhibition hall or collection display.

Bringing art into daily life does not mean reducing it to an ordinary commodity. The essential questions remain whether a work possesses a recognisable artistic language, whether it grows from sustained practice, and whether its new material and setting contribute meaningfully to its expression. Ye’s porcelain works are first and foremost an extension of his ink practice. They are neither simple applications of traditional motifs nor superficial updates presented under the name of craft.

Ye has also painted on glass and collaborated with a Guangdong master of intangible cultural heritage on a traditional revolving lantern shown at the Yuexiu Flower Fair in Guangzhou. Guangzhou’s custom of visiting the flower markets during the Lunar New Year is itself a widely shared cultural tradition. When ink painting moves from paper into lanterns and a public festive setting, the relationship between the work and its audience changes. Art is no longer encountered only through quiet contemplation; it becomes part of urban memory, communal celebration and lived experience.

Such practices remind us that there is no single route through which cultural heritage continues. Preserving original works, researching history and transmitting traditional skills remain fundamental. Allowing a mature artistic language to enter new materials, spaces and social settings is another valid path. The two are not in conflict.

Ye Yongrun’s work does not provide a universal model for the contemporary development of traditional art. It does, however, make one point clear: tradition remains alive only when it continues to be practised. Cultural heritage consists not only of what previous generations have left behind, but also of whether people today still possess the knowledge, judgement and imagination to create from it.