Dominique Fung Evokes Subliminal Romance in New Print
Produced in collaboration with Avant Arte.
Summary
- Dominique Fung drops “Handheld Fan,” a new print edition, created with Avant Arte.
- Limited to an edition of 60, the print takes root in her 2021 work “Bone Holding Fan,” revisiting and reframing colonial-era aesthetics in dreamlike veils of color.
This past spring, Canadian-Chinese artist Dominique Fung turned heads with her monumental Hong Kong solo show, welcoming onlookers into her surreal, sublime world. Her oil paintings are harmonies of ancestral and contemporary elements, finding balance in the borderlands between the two.
Now, Fung is teaming up with Avant Arte to launch a new print edition. Titled “Handheld Fan,” the release continues her exploration of colonial-era aesthetics through deft portraiture and dreamy washes of color. The artist collaborated with the printmakers at Make-Ready for the 13-layer work, completed with raised accents enhancing its tactile quality while echoing themes of cultural memory and handcrafted touch.
Based on her 2021 work “Bone Holding Fan,” the image features four faces emerging from a Qing Dynasty bone fan, an object historically associated with elite court culture and the exotics of Asian femininity as seen through the Western gaze. These ornate fans, often carved from ivory or bone, once functioned as tools of allure and concealment. In “Handheld Fan,” Fung dismantles these tropes across racial and gendered lines, transforming the fan into a fragmented yet potent site of critique and reimagination.
Limited to an edition of 60, “Handheld Fan” is a 13 layer textured UV pigment print with silkscreen matte varnish seal on 410 gsm Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White paper, and can be ordered float-mounted in one of three framing options. The artwork unframed measures 53.1 cm x 60.0 cm and will be available for $1,363 USD starting July 22. Check out Avant Arte’s website to enter the draw.
