Half-Hundred Mirrors
Yu Hong
喻红
Production date
2018-2019
Object Detail
Media
acrylic on canvas and virtual reality media component
Measurements
paintings: variable
VR component: 8 mins
VR component: 8 mins
Notes
‘Half-Hundred Mirrors’ is an autobiography, delving deeply into the artist’s memories, but also a portrait of a society in flux. Yu Hong is reflecting on her life at the age of 50, looking back to her early childhood during the Cultural Revolution; her education; her life as a young artist in the turmoil and excitement of the 1980s, and her experiences of marriage and motherhood. The 1960s toddler riding a tricycle, wearing a ‘Chairman Mao Goes to Anhui’ badge becomes the young artist hard at work in the studios of CAFA, and later experiencing travels to New York and Europe. It is deeply introspective, but Yu Hong’s ‘mirror’ also reflects a society in the throes of transformation, from one kind of political, economic and sociological state to quite another. Yu Hong’s commitment to figurative painting, which she studied from the age of 14 at the CAFA-affiliated middle and high schools, is evident in the superb technical accomplishment of these paintings; her characteristic deep reds and blues emerge from dark backgrounds, and her expressive, painterly brush-marks activate the surface of each canvas. Yet Yu Hong is also an artist who continues to innovate, evident in the experimental VR component of this work. Like her ‘Witness to Growth’ series, ‘Half-Hundred Mirrors’ reveals an artist who is adept at linking the personal and subjective with broader social narratives, including recent experiences of the demolition of artists’ studios and the ubiquity of surveillance cameras.
Accession number
2019.060