Dumpling Lady 1:  Aiyo, I keep looking and looking, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. I really can’t understand.

Crit Team:  What is it that you don’t understand?

Dumpling Lady 1:  I don’t understand what I’m looking at…

Crit Team:  Do you think it’s good? Is it pretty looking? Do you think you would put this in a museum?

Dumpling Lady 1:  Pretty it is, it is pretty looking. But how do I say… a museum? It’s possible. It is a type, what it is I don’t know how to say, but either way it feels pretty good. This thing is pretty to look at!

[Dumpling man walks by and dumpling lady asks him to take a look]

Dumpling Lady 1:  Do you have any feeling?

Dumpling Man:  It’s good, not bad. Did you make it?

Crit Team:  No, we didn’t make it!

Dumpling Man:  It is very good looking!

Crit Team:  Why do you think it’s good looking? Do you have any feelings or thoughts?

Dumpling Man:  It’s very pretty, it has an [unknown phrase equivalent to “air”], even though it’s messy. It has an [unknown phrase equivalent to “air”] about it.

Crit Team:  Sorry, what is [unknown phrase equivalent to “air”]? Apologies, our speaking has deteriorated. Our Mandarin Chinese sucks.

Dumpling Lady 1:  I also don’t know how to speak Mandarin Chinese either; we usually speak our own language from He Bei. We are farmers!

Crit Team:  Oh, do you have a lot of art where you come from?

Dumpling Lady 1:  No, we don’t have any art where we come from…

Crit Team:  Not even a little bit?

Dumping Lady 1:  Generally, we don’t have it!

Crit Team:  You mean ‘life is art’?

Dumpling Lady 1:  [laughs] What?

Crit Team:  So this to you is art?

Dumpling Lady 1:  Yes, when I look at this, it looks like art. It looks like good art [giggling]. I wanted to see if I could touch it before to see what it feels like if I touched it!

Crit Team:  So when you see this painting, it makes you want to touch it?

Dumpling Lady 1:  Yes, so I wanted to ask you earlier if I could touch it. I would recommend my friends to see it. Crit Team:  Would you hang this painting in your home? Dumpling Man:  Hang at home? Of course! Dumpling Lady 1:  Hang in my home? Let me think where I would put it… I would put it in the living room, on a table.

Crit Team:  If you were to sell it, how much would this be?

Dumpling Lady 1:  That I wouldn’t know! This would have no price. There is no price tag on art. Not on this piece of art.

[We then revealed that we were a group of artists who work at a nearby galleries and that the artist whose work they’ve been critiquing was sitting with us for dinner!]

Crit Team:  This piece of art is actually made by our good friend here, Sessa Englund, except she can’t understand anything that we are saying!

Dumpling Lady 1:  Oh, I can see it now! There’s a person on the bottom, right? So what did she make?

[Crit Team is translating between Dumpling Ladies and Sessa Englund now]

Sessa Englund: There might be! It’s very open… What did I make? I made, uh, my emotions… It can be a person down there. It’s my feelings in the painting, but it can be a person, it can be what you see in it. That’s what it’s supposed to be.

Dumpling Lady 1:  Standing from here from this perspective, it does look like a bunch of people and a person’s feeling. What is it that she was painting?

Sessa Englund: I agree [with her]. For me, it looks like a room also sometimes.

Dumpling Lady 1:  When I stand here, it looks like one person! When I stand here, it looks like two people! Standing from far away, it looks like there’s people, but when you get closer, there aren’t. They disappear. Do you see it?

Sessa Englund: Yea! Yea, I like that in paintings that when looked at from afar it looks like a person and when you get close up its just paints. I like that… Do they still like it?

Crit Team:  Do you still like it now that you know the artist a little bit?

Dumpling Lady 1:  I like it even more! [laughs]. I got to meet the artist!

[After the critique, Sessa Englund does the incredible… she offered the painting to the Dumpling Ladies as a gift!]

Sessa Englund: It’s so nice of them that they liked it! That’s so cool! That’s amazing, are you kidding me? And they saw all these people and things in it. That’s the best. If they want it… I don’t want to make them take it if they don’t want it, only if they want it.

Crit Team:  [asking the Dumpling Ladies] Would you want to keep this painting as a gift?

Dumpling Lady 3: Gift?! Of course I’ll take it! I want to slowly admire it… It’s beautiful!