Dominique Fung
NEW YORK
The West has long exoticized Asian women, imposing on us the role of a meek, subservient “other.” This fabricated image relegates us as commodities and status symbols up for grabs, much like coveted fine Chinese ceramics. Rooted in Anne Anlin Cheng’s 2018 essay “Ornamentalism: A Feminist Theory for the Yellow Woman,” postcolonial theorist Edward Said’s seminal book Orientalism (1978), and her own experiences, the work of Chinese-Canadian artist Dominique Fung holds a mirror up to the Western fetishization of Asian women.
This method of critique is seen in the surreal painting (2018). Nude feminine figures lounge around a fountain among other (2019), a woman in heels similarly reclines by a pool. Turkish bathhouses recur throughout Fung’s repertoire as an allusion to 19th-century Orientalist paintings of women in the same setting. These Orientalist depictions overlooked the social importance of the gathering places and instead sexualize the featured subjects. Fung mixes this trope of West Asia with tokens of the “Far East,” such as the trinkets in , alluding to how Asian cultures are often conflated. A darker work, (2020), shows a headless, poolside female behind dismembered bodies bearing the weight of assorted antiques. The eerie composition serves as a reminder of the burden of stereotypes.
