Abstract
This paper examines the trajectories of two women artists who blazed their own paths in colonial Hong Kong: Fang Zhaoling (1914-2006) and Irene Chou (1924-2011). Both emerged from the shadow of male mentors, Chang Da-chien (1899-1983) and Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975) respectively, and developed individualistic compositions in ink and color. Fang experimented with dramatic perspectives and created deliberately naïve figures that embody “zhuo,” or clumsiness, an aesthetic that is not traditionally associated with the feminine ideal in classical China. Her striking representations of the plight of the Vietnamese boat people speak to her empathy for displaced people, a subject rarely treated in ink painting. Chou turns more toward her inner world, developing biomorphic abstractions that have immense visual power. Similarly for her paintings of women, Chou’s most striking compositions often incorporate an intense blackness that captures melancholy and anxiety. Under-examined outside of Hong Kong, these two artists exemplify the immense freedom in ink painting during the late twentieth century, and invite discussions on the role of Hong Kong in this development.