Dominique Fung’s Tongue-in-Cheek Rejections of the Orientalist Gaze

By Isabel Ling

Dominique Fung’s work provides respite from the exhausting emptiness of the cult of authenticity. The artist’s luscious, surrealist tableaus celebrate the synthetic by reclaiming objects that have become synonymous with Orientalism. Fung’s larger-than-life oil paintings, replete with anthropomorphized celadon vessels and otherworldly fauna, create breathtaking dream sequences that invite the viewer to consider alternate realities.

Dominique Fung, “Through the Looking Glass” (2020), oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

In Relics and Remains, Fung’s first solo show at Nicodim, accessible both online and in-person via appointment, the Canadian-Chinese artist explores her identity as 竹升 (jook-sing). Directly translated from Cantonese as “bamboo pole,” the pejorative term is slang for persons of Chinese descent living overseas who identify more strongly with Western culture. The works featured in the show, based on years-long research, were all completed in 2020 after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of time that has left many jook-sings in quarantine adrift as anti-Asian racism has escalated across the global diaspora. As I viewed the exhibition from a safe social distance online, works like “Stay at Home” and “Through the Looking Glass,” which render subjects in quiet, domestic isolation, struck a chord. In each, a figure peers into cylindrical glass vessels containing goldfish. Despite the warmth emanating from the paintings’ decadent colors, it is the faces, fragmented and suspended in water, that are unshakeable, invoking the state of limbo that characterizes the jook-sing experience...READ MORE