Notes on the Hong Yan Bo Ming Series

 

     Han dynasty’s (206 BC-220 AD) idiom:  Hong Yan Bo Ming (Out of the greatest beauty, lies the greatest ruin.)

 

     Wu Hung points out that, ‘ruins’, both physical and psychic, have become in Chinese art “fragmented signifiers” that reflect the present society’s failure “to link experiences into a coherent sequence or whole.”

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     Within each Hing Yan Bo Ming painting, I connected the onscreen depictions of the Chinese 'modern woman' and the reality of their personal tragedies that so moved me when choosing them as my ‘models’ for my paintings. 

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     By weighting these 'models' down with relics, artifacts, bugs, vines, etc., I am visually signifying the burden of 5000-years of Chinese cultural and societal history that they shouldered in their evolution toward ‘ruin’.

           

     In so doing, I connected China's rich and tragic past with its deeply rooted patriarchal history, and the present with its deeply rooted ongoing process of ruin and fragmentation, both implied by the Hong Yan Bo Ming idiom that serves as the title for this series of paintings.

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