This painting is a portrait of Shi Pei Pu, a Chinese opera singer and spy. Posing as a woman, Shi had a long sexual affair with the French diplomat Bernard Boursicot in order to obtain secrets for the Chinese Communist Party. Later, when Brousicot and Shi were brought to trial, Boursciot insisted that he never knew Shi was a man.

This portrait is part of a series of paintings by the artist, each depicting one of the four people she would send into space on a civilian mission. These portraits are part of Nguyen’s exploration of modern-day space travel. They are also influenced by her recent research into Forest City—a man-made, tropical, plant-covered, tax-free Malaysian island located in the Singapore Strait between Malaysia and Singapore. When Nguyen visited the island in 2019, a salesperson lauded the sustainable city as a wonderful and luxurious place to raise kids, receive great medicare care and retire as there was “no climate change” in this utopia. After the trip, Nguyen began to imagine Forest City as an aspirational and utopian nation with a space force.

Nguyen created a national flag for the island for these paintings. Throughout the four portraits, viewers will see a flag spread across the composition. The flag features twelve alternating green and blue horizontal stripes which represent unchanging land and water over the twelve hours of a day. In the center of the flag is a big white circle, which represents a perfect sun—a source of light and truth. Nguyen uses this flag by placing it across a subject or weaving it through foliage, where the various symbols—representing sun, water and land—can move and suggest new meaning. These four portraits suggest that while the flag aspires for human perfection, humans and culture constantly agitate this pursuit. As the flag moves around, viewers witness a distortion of the circular sun—while the stripes that depict unmoving land and water are in constant motion.