Yu Hong is not a religious painter. Yet in her work, she tackles the epic themes of sacred art, from birth to death, over sorrow, desire, community, and absurdity in her large-scale figurative paintings depicting different stages of human life. We met the artist in Chiesetta della Misericordia in Cannaregio, Venice, Italy, where she shed light on how she grapples with life’s fundamental questions and the human condition as an artist. “My work is not about religion,” Yu Hong explains, “It’s only about life.” Nonetheless, she is open about how grand religious painters like Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Titian, and Bosch have influenced her practice. Religious painting, Yu Hong explains, asks the same universal questions: “Who we are, where do we come from, where we are going, what life and death mean, and how we should live.” The interview takes place against the backdrop of Yu Hong’s exhibition ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, presented by the Asian Art Initiative of the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
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The exhibition features figurative and narrative paintings: a newborn baby, covered in blood and fetal fat, connected to its mother by an umbilical cord, and a ten-part painting, suspended in the choir, each depicting a scene of different physical stages of life. With their golden backgrounds and formal installations, the works respond to the Renaissance architecture context of the Chiesetta della Misericordia. Reflecting on the effect of the church space, Yu Hong concludes the interview: “You can feel the history. I hope that people come here to feel the church and the space - and then see the work. To think about yourself, your life, and your future.” Yu Hong (b. 1966 in Xi’an, China) studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), where she is now a teacher. She is known and celebrated for her depictions of the female experience and perspectives in figurative painting, ranging from intimate portrayals of human relationships to epic allegories of the apocalypse. Yu Hong is part of the New Generation artists—a group of young artists who broke away from the state-sponsored Socialist Realism in China. In 1990, she organized the groundbreaking exhibition “The World of Women Artists” and in 1993 and 1997, she participated in the Venice Biennale. Yu Hong has exhibited internationally at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; and Long March Space, Beijing, among others.
