Ambiguous Space aka Hua Xuan Painting

This two panel painting was inspired by a Qing dynasty work titled “Eight Beauties” by Hua Xuan (circa 1736). The traditional work depicted a group of women, which is a departure from the typical meiren (literally 'beautiful woman') paintings found during this period. Whereas the conventional depictions feature one or two women, usually in well-appointed interiors, the women in Hua’s painting exist in a realm that blurs the public and private. Glancing "outward", the women are framed by architectural components -- a balustrade at the foreground and cornice framing the top -- that create a sense of intimacy while simultaneously providing a stage on which the women are prominently presented. The ambiguity in the existence of space in that 18th century painting passed from generations onto the 21st century work of Annysa Ng, who signifies the state of perpetual cultural drift between the West and the East in her birth place – Hong Kong. In the painting, the subjects are featureless black-out images lacking the physiognomic inferences of emotion and identity. Costume became the only visual language. Combining the Elizabethan collar with traditional Chinese costume, the silhouette does not merely illustrate the combination of cultures found in Hong Kong, but specifies the paradox of constructing that which is void of identity. The painting negotiates both the presence and absence of culture that takes place in Hong Kong, where people cannot be defined as Chinese or British yet struggle to form themselves into something distinct from both. Nevertheless, the aesthetic and seamless mergence discloses a gesture towards embracing, rather than rejecting, the full extent of that multi-faceted heritage.