The China Project

173 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection Wilson SHIEH Wilson Shieh’s delicate silk and watercolour paintings feature characters engaged in whimsical activities. His style draws from the tradition of gongbi (fine-brush) painting, an ancient Chinese art form that demands precise technical craftsmanship and concentration. Initially orthodox in appearance and involving classical motifs, this style allows Shieh to introduce complex, and sometimes subversive, narratives. A minute attention to detail and the creation of an amorphous space or background against which his semi-narrative events are played out are characteristic of Shieh’s paintings. His protagonists are unique, absurd characters, often involved in a process of metamorphosis into plants, musical instruments, animals, birds or ceramics, or engrossed in activities such as swimming and meditation. An emphasis both on the erotic and on sexual ambiguity is also a typical feature. Hong Kong was handed over to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, and this event is a departure point for many of Shieh’s works. In his art, he reflects on human relationships and entanglements as a metaphor for the relations between China and Hong Kong. Art critic Bridget Goodbody writes that ‘Shieh’s genius lies in his ability to use expressions of sexual desire that playfully comment on the current political and cultural climate of Hong Kong’. 1 In Boys in blue sea 2006, this metaphor is evident. Shieh grew up in multicultural Kennedy Town, in which Chinese, Portuguese, British and South Asian cultures mingled. His grandfather was a Nanyang trader: the term refers to a diasporic community of Chinese in South East Asia, who formed significant trading and cultural networks during the nineteenth century. The Nanyang became important to Shieh as symbolic of a broader notion of identity, particularly following Hong Kong’s merger with mainland China. In this seemingly benign painting, the stylised pattern formed by the waves refers to Ming dynasty blue-and-white porcelain, and to similar patterns found on Portuguese porcelain, which entered China through the formerly Portuguese territory of Macau (which reunified with China in 1999). By referencing these diverse influences, Shieh expresses nostalgia for the extensive network of cultural relations and ties that once existed in Nanyang China. Equally important in these subtle paintings is Shieh’s reflection on the complexity of human relationships. In Cat play 2006, the lithe figure performing acrobatic contortions is sensuously absorbed in his own actions; Boys in blue sea has each swimmer looking away from his companions, isolated in his own space; and in Picture of eight poses 2006, the strange human–animal figures are engaged in their own reveries of metamorphosis. Wilson Shieh’s whimsical paintings illuminate both contemporary narratives and personal viewpoints. Combining new with old, they are always unexpected, humorous and poignant. endnote 1 Bridget Goodbody, ‘Wilson Shieh: Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps’, Art Asia Pacific , no.46, fall 2005, p.64. Boys in blue sea 2006 Chinese ink and watercolour on silk mounted on four layers of Chinese rice paper (Xuan paper) / 69.5 x 99.4cm / Purchased 2007 Picture of eight poses 2006 Chinese ink and watercolour on silk mounted on four layers of Chinese rice paper (Xuan paper) / 71.2 x 104.8cm / Purchased 2007