Tsz Kam, Black Lion, 2023, Acrylic Gouache on Cotton Rag Mounted on Panel, 18 x 24
The Cantonese Lion:
This creature is often animated by two dancers wearing a single costume through choreographed acrobatic dances. Lion dances are often performed in celebration of Lunar New Year and the grand opening of businesses. The Cantonese or Southern variation is visually distinct from the Northern variant, and is iconic throughout the Sino diaspora across the world. In my paintings, they are often given the anatomical structure of a canine rather than feline, this is because in the West, they are often labeled “fu dogs”. Lions are not native to East Asia, the original visual inspiration for Chinese lion depiction was likely based more on dogs than big cats.
Moreover, in the early days of colonial Hong Kong, many martial arts masters set up their own businesses offering martial arts classes in Hong Kong after fleeing mainland China. They offered lion dance performances as a service to their communities. Lion dance is therefore related to kung fu culture. Unlike most other cultures of the world, Chinese culture does not have any form of social dance. Choreographed performances like the lion dance and the dragon dance are not social dances, and are more performative and ritualistic in nature. Southern Chinese were not originally part of the Northern Han ethnic group, Southern tribes were perceived as barbaric. To me, the martial arts origin of Cantonese lion dance is a reminder of that history and the resistance to total assimilation into a single monolithic Chinese identity that exists even to this day.
The Black Lion in this painting takes on the color of the radical camp of the anti-extradition protestors of 2019. Its forehead is stamped with the black bauhinia crest used by this group. The official flag of Hong Kong is a white bauhinia flower on a red background representing the communist party and Chinese culture. The radical protesters replaced the red background with black. Bauhinias are native to Hong Kong.
The five stars have been omitted in the black flag because the five stars correspond to the five found in the Chinese flag, which represent the CCP and the four social classes that are subject to the party under Chinese communist principles.
The Flytrap:
I designed the flytraps with something very cactus and succulent like in mind. I have also experimented with different expressions by creating different variants. They are sometimes depicted as more rigid and sometimes very wild and fluid like Van Gogh’s sunflowers. Two different variants can be observed in this painting in the lower corner and behind the lion outside the circular window.
Pink Granite:
The pink coloring of the architectural elements references the pink granite used to build the Texas capitol. The stars ornament adorning the window each point outwards towards their own direction, unlike the arrangement of stars in the Chinese flag, which has the four stars pointing towards the larger star, representing the four social classes bowing down to CCP authority.