The Four Friends (A tale of 4 heads and 4 tails)

4 double-sided paintings: Oil and glitter on primed paper, opaque watercolour on paper, Chinese ink on paper
400 x 175 cm (each 175 x 100 cm)
2022 

Floating recto/verso artworks depict 4 animals represented by one figure’s head on one side of the painting and the other figure’s tail on the other side as if they are chasing one another in roundabouts. They never touch, like stories ‘chasing’ after other stories: tails chasing tails and tales chasing tales. Persistence and the challenging pursuit of friendship and genuine encounters in a time of divided societies and polarised ideologies are emphasised with multilingual painting techniques. The readings of the paintings shift depending on where you are standing as a viewer and as you walk around the artwork. Will the 4 friends manage to come together? Escaping the margins and running out of the frames, crossing borders and translation into different mediums, the animals transform as they also stay the same; they are transformed by the process of moving, which is constant since life = animation, animate, animals, and movement is life.