I have met Hong Wai in 2007, in Paris, France.  At that time, she was still attending her doctoral degree at the Paris University of Social Sciences. In March 2007, she invited me who was still living in Paris to visit in the opening of her solo exhibition "Une fleur, par hasard" (A whim, A bloom) at the Impression Gallery.  I still remember that she painted flowers in ink on paper. The works were pretty and invoked the beauty of oriental ink art right in the centre of Paris. She has also invited Bruce Pun, who was also from Macau and was studying music in Paris, to play classical guitar for her opening. The gallery was filled with exoticism.

 

I remember Hong Wai as someone gentle who spoke little. But somehow she seemed to be unusually determined about the path she wanted to take.

 

Later, I returned to Macau. But Hong Wai stayed in France and even created a family there. After her marriage, she gave birth to her first child in 2011. She recalled: "I stopped painting after ‘Une fleur, par hasard’, because I have to complete my thesis. The two years of writing the paper is the "empty" period for my artistic practices, which allowed me to rethink my path." Hong Wai revealed that because she gave birth to a child, her life underwent huge transformation. In 2012, she took up the paint brush again, but this time not with ink but the ipad for digital painting. The 180-degree change in terms of art form brought her some shock and food for thought, rethinking the meaning and form of Chinese ink painting.

 

And it was after that she started the "Secret de Boudoir" series, in which she painted female intimate products, such as underwear, high heels and so on. She combined the traditional form of ink painting to exposed the consumerism of women's products in contemporary society. This tendency to breakthrough defined concepts and forms has already been present in Hong Wai's work when she was still studying in Taiwan. Her "Life in Motion" series, created in 2004 and 2005, used ink painting to depict the state of cells such as chromosomes, neurons, etc..The result was abstract in form but vivid in motion. Going back to her path of transformation in ink, all comes together so naturally.

 

Born in a Shanghai family and moved to Macau at the age of one, Hong Wai began to learn Chinese ink painting from the age of fourteen. It seemed that she was cultivated to follow the traditions as many other women who came from the same kind of background.  But she said that actually it was her idea to learn ink painting, her parents never imposed it for her. So since an early age, she was attracted by the oriental aesthetic of Chinese Ink Art. Later in her life she started  to travel around from Macau to Taiwan and then to France. Perhaps, her rebellious genes must meet the French revolutionary soil, in order to formally sprout.  Finally, the "Secret de boudoir" has evolved into “Feminine Landscape", which is no longer objects hidden in a boudoir, but a declaration of feminism in traditional Chinese ink painting.

 

Hong Wai explained that the composition of "Feminine Landscape" came from the Song and Yuan dynasty ink painting, such as Dong Yuan in the Five Dynasties and his famous “Realm of Non-Self”; and Ni Yunlin and Huang Gongwang in Yuan Dynasty and their approach of “The Realm of Self”. The latter focused not on the faithful reproduction of objective scene (whether overall or detailed), but on how to convey the artist's subjective concept of mind through some natural scenery and images. Hong Wai has pushed this concept vigorously, so that the landscape is no longer a landscape, but a landscape composed of female bodies.  The “Self” is unscrupulous in this mysterious scene. The body wrapped in lace flower pattern is floating on the flowing ink painting of clouds, and it is illusory. The brush touches between the delicate texture and the coarse diffusing ink marks, provocative and plucking at the same time.  The imagination and consumption of lust toward women that Hong Hui boldly assumed on the large rice paper, was framed and then hung on the wall. Quoting the artist herself, “In the artworks of Feminine Landscape, where female bodies were placed into the context of Chinese Ink Landscape Paintings. Emotions and sex is juxtaposed with heaven and men. It is an inner spirit to transcend the female body to merge with the harmony of men and nature.” And did all these release her deep and simultaneous worship and rebellion against those established values?

 

After a long period of time painting strokes of the lace pattern weaved on the paper, Hong Wai wanted to return to Nature. Her latest work, "Moonlight Series", is a removal of concept. Whether ink or landscape, she just dived right into it, using the composition of photography to freeze the elements of nature, and then slowly and leisurely, she continues to do what she likes the most: painting, by the light of the moon.

 

Curator
Alice Kok