How Beijing ink artist Bingyi blurs the lines between history and fiction
In her solo exhibition, ‘Taihang Rhapsody’, at Asia Society Hong Kong, the Yale University-educated artist challenges Western conventions
Relics are often presented as art; rarely does the opposite occur. But Beijing-based artist Bingyi has been doing just that, by blurring the lines between history and fiction.
The 51-year-old, who is surnamed Huang but goes by her artist’s name, has an in-depth understanding of Chinese history. She grew up reading classical Chinese texts under the influence of her scholar grandfather and went on to earn a PhD in Chinese art at Yale University, in the United States. But none of that has constrained the way she reimagines history in her art.
“Taihang Rhapsody”, her solo exhibition at the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, is an eclectic collection of ink paintings and texts disguised as archaeological discoveries from an alternate past, centred on a figure called Hua, the fictional “Matriarch of Painting” from China’s Northern Song dynasty (960-1127).
One of the first rooms in the Chantal Miller Gallery showcases her speculative narratives about Hua in the form of handrolls presented as “historic” texts.
