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Yuqi Wang (1985) centres their painting practice on rice. The artist uses cooked rice grains that are left to mature, resulting in a soft, watery, flesh-like substance. Wang combines this material with red ink to paint over existing photographs, after which the layered result is photographed. While their choice of subject matter has shifted over the years, Wang’s method of working remains closer to that of a painter than a photographer: mutable, layered, and deeply connected to questions of identity and cultural origin.
The photographs Wang paints over largely date from the twentieth century, a period in which Orientalism was pervasive in the West. By reworking these images, Wang investigates how symbolic materials and cultural entanglements can be mobilized to reimagine questions of ‘belonging’ and ‘being’.
Wang’s work at Prospects consists of a triptych of photographs depicting East Asian women’s hairstyles. Onto these images, the artist has painted scenes that reference the biblical story of Samson wrestling with the lion. The brushstrokes follow the contours of the animal, yet through abstraction form a distinct visual pattern of their own. Samson’s supernatural strength resides in his hair; once his long mane is cut, he loses this power. By combining this Christian narrative with exoticizing photographs by Western photographers, Wang seeks to disrupt their objectifying gaze. As Wang explains: ‘The original photographs feel empty because of their orientalist framing. By injecting the rice into the images, I give them new flesh and blood, bringing them symbolically closer to the living body.’
Written by Kelly-ann van Steveninck