Details:

This drawing is part of a triptych based on a story titled "The Painted Wall" from "Liaozhai zhiyi," a collection of ghost stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songlin from 1740. "The Painted Wall" revolves around an erotic encounter between a Chinese scholar and a temple mural. Mesmerized by a beautiful lady in the mural, the scholar enters the painting, and the boundary between illusion and reality completely blurs.
Unframed
Signed

① Artwork:

Strange Tales Painted Wall No:1, Part 2

This drawing is part of a triptych based on a story titled "The Painted Wall" from Liaozhai zhiyi, a collection of ghost stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songlin from 1740. The Painted Wall revolves around an erotic encounter between a Chinese scholar and a temple mural. Mesmerized by a beautiful lady in the mural, the scholar enters the painting, and the boundary between illusion and reality completely blurs.

Drawing from the tradition of “strange tales”–a genre of writing featuring ghosts, magical shapeshifters, and other supernatural characters and events, the artist investigates the idea of “female ghosts” in this painting. In this way, she reimagines Chinese classicist literature within a post-colonial context.

Having studied and worked between China and America, Yongqi Tang has been influenced by the drastically different cultural and ideological contexts of her two countries. Her works examine our self-mediated images and how they relate to the broader human experiences of gender, sexuality, and nationality by blending allegories, myths, and symbols from both Western and Chinese traditions.

Specs:

43 inches
43 inches

③ Artist:

Yongqi Tang

Having studied and worked between China and America, Yongqi Tang has drawn influence from these drastically different cultures and ideologies. As such, the artist deconstructs her roles in private and public spaces, investigating through painting and drawing how social identities get constructed. Yongqi’s works examine our self-mediated images and how they relate to the broader human experiences of gender, sexuality and nationality. By blending allegories, myths and symbols from both Western and Chinese traditions, she playfully reinterprets the discourse around these fungible categories into which we are born.

Yongqi Tang was born in 1997 in China and lives in Seattle, WA. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing (2022), her BA in Painting and Drawing (2019), and her BS in Psychology (2019) from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

She has mounted her work in a solo exhibition at Specialist Gallery in Seattle, WA, and group shows such as Cruel Spring at Latitude Gallery in New York City, NY (2023); Culture II at Strada World in New York City, NY (2022); The End at Sandpoint Gallery in Seattle, WA (2022); and The Reordering of Things at Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle, WA (2021).

She is the recipient of the Bernie Funk Artist Scholarship (2022), the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Artists Scholarship Award (2022), and the Boyer and Elizabeth Bole Gonzales Scholarship for Excellence (2021).

Her art has been covered in numerous outlets, including Shoutout LA, Maake Magazine, and elsewhere.

Yongqi Tang:
Strange Tales Painted Wall No:1, Part 2, 2022
Charcoal on paper
43.0 × 43.0 inches /