Holly Wong
I create installations and mixed media assemblages that summon protection and celebrate female energy. With painting, drawing, sewing and candle smoke, my works reconnects the fragments of myself. My art harnesses the elusive nature of memory, myth, and unexpressed trauma in a visual reconstruction of cause and effect. Castles, winged shapes, quilt patterns and biomorphic shapes from nature anchor brightly colored prisms lovingly adorned with oil paint or gouache offset by larger, bolder areas. These complex visual stories invoke alternative narratives of a heroine’s journey. My major artistic influences include the work of surrealists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, medieval painters such as Duccio, and the Pattern & Decoration movement.
In both my large-scale installations and intimate works on paper and panel, I travel on the metaphorical journey between worlds of life and death as told in the Greek myth of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. This journey mirrors the art making process itself by returning hidden, or buried patterns, colors, and gestures to shared space. Uncovering these elements becomes a sacred practice of recovery that I share with the viewer.
