Created By
Hong Wai
Ink and color on silver Xuan paper on wood
Curator
Artbridger Curator
Wai Hong's "Alternative Landscape Series - Fragrant Mountains" challenges viewers to reconsider the traditional symbolism of Chinese landscape painting by subverting and reinterpreting its key elements. Through the juxtaposition of mountain forms with voluptuous bodies and intimate undergarments, the artist invites us to contemplate the intersection of nature, femininity, and cultural symbolism. This provocative fusion of traditional and contemporary aesthetics prompts a thought-provoking dialogue on the evolving narratives of identity and landscape in a rapidly changing world.
In this painting created during Arbridger's artist in residence cohort 1, at Soho House Hong Kong in January to March 2025, the human body and the traditional landscape are simultaneously transformed by the artist’s personal deconstruction. Especially the Alternative Landscape series, there the landscape with mountain and water, the highest spiritual and moral metaphor in Chinese painting, is secretly deconstructed by the artist into the voluptuous bodies. While the traditional Chinese geomancy sees the energy forces in the chains of mountains as an embodiment of dragon, Hong Wai depicts this cosmic body as an undulating body of femininity, and the most sensuous women’s underwear.
Created By
Hong Wai
Framed
95 x 135 cm | 37 x 53 in
2025
