Ah! Secretary; Elf and Wukong
Liao Guohe
廖国核
Production date
2011
Object Detail
Media
acrylic on canvas
Measurements
65 x 80 cm
Notes
Ah! Secretary; Elf and Wukong (2011), depicts some sort of sexual encounter between a human figure (whom we only see from the waist down, apparently garbed in the robes of the Monkey King) and a wriggling snake with the head of a monkey. ‘Wukong’ refers to Sun Wukong, the rebellious Monkey King of Chinese legend and popular culture, and ‘elf’ is used here as a translation of the Chinese term ‘Yaojing’, which is perhaps more accurately translated as ‘siren’ or ‘evil spirit’. ‘Monkey’ and ‘snake’ said together in Chinese are homonyms for a derogatory description of a Communist Party ‘mouthpiece’. Like the scatological graffiti scrawled by a disaffected student on a bathroom wall or across a page in their textbook, the work is both funny and violent, an attack on Orientalist stereotypes of Chinese aesthetic refinement.
Accession number
2012.062