Dumplings dive, a lychee lounges, a tea egg totes a suitcase – there’s food for thought in oil painter Chang Ya-chin’s still lifes, on show in Hong Kong
- Chang Ya-chin paints still lifes of everyday Hong Kong food items, from fruit to dumplings to bubble tea, placing them in unexpected settings
- ‘I don’t go into it thinking I want to be funny,’ says the classically trained Chang, whose art, showing for the first time in the city, is laced with poignancy
If one of the functions of art is to make you view the world in a different way, then the success of Chang Ya-chin’s paintings is – like the noodles she features in her work – instant.
Once you have seen her dumplings bravely climbing a ladder as they prepare to dive into a bowl of dark vinegar, or her lonely tea egg carting a suitcase across a bridge, or her unpeeled lychee lying back on a swing looking more wanton than any decent fruit has a right to appear, the universe of Hong Kong food takes on a new flavour.
These are not dashed-off jokes. They are old-school oil paintings in the style of Jean Siméon Chardin or Jacob Van Es, had those artists taken an anthropomorphic approach to their still-life work.
“I don’t go into it thinking I want to be funny,” says Chang at Kiang Malingue gallery in Aberdeen, where her first Hong Kong exhibition, “These Things”, is being shown.
“When I go to a grocer’s store, it’s like a casting call. You pick up a pear and it has so much personality. But I’m also playing with the shapes, the light and the shadow and how they interact.”
