“I’m not ridiculing anything or making any demands, but rather outlining the contradictions in life in a kind of lighthearted way.”
Born Taipei, Taiwan, 1984. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Huang Hai-Hsin is untrained in painting: all she knows about it she learned in high school. Since moving to New York in her early twenties, she has developed a style both colourful and slightly crude to convey the mix of menace and farce that she finds in everyday life. Many of her rapidly executed paintings are miniature reworkings of images grabbed from institutional and media websites. In two-metre-high paintings such as Barber Shop (2011) and Birdland (2011), she uses repetition, clashing colours and odd details to invest commonplace scenes and “stories” with an aura of danger or absurdity. Life is like skating on a thinly frozen lake, she believes: “People are basically happy and healthy, but there is something weird behind it all. We trust what we see or what government tells us, but there is something strange and humorous and scary behind it all.” Being a migrant makes her more alert to such disconnects: “New York has a dark side … the cultural difference is hard. People are aggressive; I don’t feel safe staying here,” she says. But “I learn more and become stronger living here … whatever you do, people want to support you. I feel more freedom here as an artist.”
