I want to illustrate a dialogue through my work, a dialogue between ancient and modern, between China and the West. I painted ancient women from a contemporary perspective, visual re-creations of ancient paintings using mixed media. My purpose is to explore female consciousness and character reflecting on contemporary female self-expression. Since ancient times, female painters have been very rare in China because the thinking that men are superior to women and also that women without talent are virtuous has historically influenced Chinese culture. Only women who worked in brothels or whose fathers or ancestors had access to painting could paint or become artists. However, as women, they could not participate in the imperial examination so most of their works were not recognised or passed down.

I aim to connect aspects of modern female thinking with an ancient female lineage through reinterpreting historic images of women. I have appropriated clothes, hairstyles and forehead patterns that date from the Tang Dynasty, the most liberal era in China's feudal history. After the first and only Empress, concubines or palace wives and consorts could bare their skin or wear men's clothes, and brothel women wore the same clothes as the concubines.

I want to use their clothes and hairstyles to show the open and inclusive cultural morays. The items that women are holding in my paintings reference China in the 1970s and 1980s as well as my personal memories, indicated via the use my shadow. Masks also reflect the contemporary global backdrop of the pandemic.

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In the cooking?, 2021  

watercolour, gouache, colour pencil, oil painting, tracing paper, ink.  

1000 x 700 mm

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Drinking boiled water, 2021  

watercolour, gouache, colour pencil, oil painting, tracing paper, ink.  

700 x 500 mm

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Is my handkerchief beautiful?, 2021  

Watercolour, gouache, colour pencil, oil painting, tracing paper.  

700 x 560 mm

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Meditation with the bike, 2021  

watercolour, gouache, colour pencil, oil painting, tracing paper.  

70 x 560 mm

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Two fans, 2021  

watercolour, gouache, colour pencil, oil painting, tracing paper.  

1000 x 700 mm

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