MASSIMODECARLO is happy to current Beneath the Golden Cover, Dominique Fung‘s first Hong Kong solo present. Along with her distinctive mix of historic reference and symbolism, Fung paints a world of contradictions, the place grandeur is laced with disquiet, authority is performative, and the artifacts of the previous refuse to remain nonetheless.
On the coronary heart of this new physique of labor is Empress Dowager Cixi, a determine lengthy debated in historic narratives. The de facto ruler of China from 1861 till her dying in 1908, Cixi has been portrayed within the West as ruthless and manipulative, whereas in China, her legacy stays contested. Fung doesn’t search to reclaim Cixi, however as an alternative makes use of her as a lens to discover energy, femininity, and the methods wherein historical past is mediated and mythologized.
Fung’s engagement with Cixi is private – formed by childhood reminiscences of interval dramas, a ebook urged by a buddy, and later, a deeper reckoning with how colonial narratives have filtered and distorted historical past. A carpet from Cixi’s court docket, included within the exhibition, serves as each a tangible relic and a fraction of an elusive previous. This layered strategy mirrors Fung’s personal diasporic identification, one formed throughout time, geography, and inherited reminiscence.
In Fung’s work, Cixi is a lingering presence, woven into the silk of imperial robes, the load of lacquered jewelry packing containers, and the shifting, dreamlike areas of Fung’s compositions. These works invite viewers to rethink who controls the telling of historical past and the way energy is each framed and obscured.
Within the triptych The She Dragon, The Fragile Phoenix, and The Limping Dragon, Fung distills the intricate energy dynamics between concubines, empresses, and emperors right into a dreamlike visible language. Every panel embodies a key historic determine: The She Dragon personifies Empress Dowager Cixi, The Fragile Phoenix represents Empress Consort Ci’an, and The Limping Dragon evokes the Xianfeng Emperor. Whereas the empresses burst into full-bodied coloration – commanding, vivid, and uncontainable – the monochrome emperor stays within the periphery, a reminder of an influence that finally faltered.
This work introduces a brand new method: a two-tone shift that presents completely different viewpoints inside a single composition. Fung’s use of a number of canvases inside a portray attracts from the normal Chinese language scroll format, reinforcing her layered strategy to storytelling.
Central to Fung’s inquiry is the function of ladies – figures whose needs and existence have been neglected, exoticized, or confined to the margins of historical past. Drawing from a lineage of unnamed concubines and the lived realities of up to date womanhood, her work dissolve the boundaries between historical past and fantasy, truth and fiction.
A brand new collection of Twentieth-century jewelry packing containers introduced within the exhibition builds on Fung’s ongoing exploration of sculptural kinds. These lacquered packing containers function metaphors for the layered nature of womanhood. Lengthy decreased to ornament, ladies – like these polished exteriors – have been formed to mirror an phantasm of magnificence, whereas beneath lies one thing way more complicated.
This stress between what’s seen and what’s hid runs all through Fung’s work. Impressed by the lighting strategies of Dutch masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt, she treats darkness as a backdrop the place flickering candlelight guides the attention. Like a cinematographer, she composes her work to guide consideration by way of layered scenes, the place shifting gentle and shadow direct the main focus.
Marching throughout one canvas, fish troopers – a motif borrowed from historic Chinese language bronzes – transfer as if animated by the absurdity of historical past itself. Elsewhere, cloth twists into landscapes, our bodies morph into natural matter, and structure crumbles into dreamlike fragments. This sense of perpetual change extends to Fung’s palette, which started with the wealthy hues of Tang dynasty funerary ceramics however steadily advanced. Over time, it absorbed the patina of objects weathered by land and sea – ambers, rusty greys, deep greens, and earthy undertones – echoing the gradual erosion of historical past.
And maybe that is the crux of Beneath the Golden Cover: nothing is ever really nonetheless. Energy shifts, historical past mutates, and objects carry the load of previous lives. Fung’s work don’t search to reconstruct Cixi’s world; somewhat, they grapple with its interpretations, its omissions, its myths. She invitations us to see behind the golden curtain – not for definitive solutions, however to discover, query, and witness the material because it billows and shifts, revealing and concealing.
