Penguin road 1999

Based on the style of Ming dynasty gongbi painter Chen Hongshou (1598–1652), Wilson Shieh’s finely drawn watercolour paintings humorously comment on human relationships, and broader political currents, through the depiction of couples displaying animal-like attributes. Shieh’s paintings have been interpreted in terms of the wider metaphor of the political relationship between Hong Kong and China, with these paintings produced two years after Britain’s 1997 handover of the city to mainland China. Witty and delicately subversive, Shieh’s works redefine gender roles and blur their boundaries, suggesting a world in which these stereotypes, or relationships of power, are not fixed and binding but fluid, unexpected and quickly reversible.