Anachronistic Chinoiserie - Fragrance Habor | 2025 | Digital painting | 48 x 54 in. (122 x 137 cm)

Anachronistic Chinoiserie - Sanssouci Park Germany | 2025 | Digital painting | 48 x 80 in. (122 x 203 cm)

The name “Hong Kong” meaning “Fragrant Harbor” is believed to originate from the historic incense trade when agarwood was stored and exported from its harbors. Anachronistic Chinoiserie - Fragrant Habor layers the skyline with a blooming Hong Kong orchid tree, while a silhouetted figure holds a seed from the Aquilaria tree, the source of agarwood—connecting memory, place, and the sensory traces of cultural history.

 

Anachronistic Chinoiserie

In my current body of work delves into the aesthetics and contradictions of chinoiserie—defined as the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and other Sinosphere artistic traditions. Closely tied to Orientalism, chinoiserie is less a faithful reflection of Chinese culture than an imaginative projection of what Europeans once desired it to be. While it often embodies distortion and exoticism, it also remains a rich visual archive of cross-cultural encounter. Rather than dismissing chinoiserie as an outdated or harmful style, I engage in a dialogue with its ornamental language—appropriating, subverting, and reconfiguring it into a generative space where East-West signifiers collide, overlap, and fuse. Through intentional anachronism, I layer historical references and contemporary sensibilities to unsettle the borders of time, culture, and authenticity.
These works transpose chinoiserie’s ornamental idiom into unexpected geographies: for instance, a reimagining of New York’s Central Park framed through a chinoiserie lens, or a painting of the Chinesisches Haus in Sanssouci Park, Germany—a Rococo pavilion that fuses European and Chinese motifs. By layering temporal and cultural dissonances, these paintings highlight the hybridity, theatricality, and construct inherent in chinoiserie. 
By situating chinoiserie within anachronistic reconfigurations, I aim to question how cultural aesthetics migrate, transform, and persist across eras. Anachronistic Chinoiserie proposes not to resolve the contradictions of chinoiserie, but to activate them—inviting viewers to reflect on hybridity, cultural translation, and the beauty and tension of the in-between.

reVisit Chinoiserie | 2023 | Ink, acrylic, fiber paste on printed linen | Two panel: 118 x 54 in. each | Overall dimension 118 x 108 in. (300 x 274 cm)

Set against the backdrop of New York’s Central Park, featuring the iconic Bow Bridge and the grand twin towers of the luxury apartment building, The San Remo. In this work the birds wander outside the ornate birdcage, a quiet commentary on the beauty of liberty and the value of freedom.

Anachronistic Chinoiserie - Central Park New York | 2025 | Digital painting | 42 x 56 in. (106 x 142 cm)

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