Jacquie Meng: Statement

These paintings explore representations of personal and cultural diasporic identity, through ways of grounding and ungrounding lived experiences and embedded cultural practices.  In doing so, images in forming identity are self-conceptualised and in-flux. Meng’s paintings draws together lived experiences of cultural difference with historical references to narrative and landscape painting, such as flattening of perspective and discoordination of interior and exterior spaces in Chinese silkscreen and Japanese woodblock prints.  She makes reference to an array of cultural practices and artefacts, landscapes, and daily scenes- both real and imagined.  For example, Playing Fake Basketball Near the Town Hall// Claire and Genie watch me dive into Dickson Pool (diptych) incorporates the landscape of Meng’s local pool with friends, but with the inserted imagery of fictional grass hills and hedges in the shape of Chinese stamps and mythology, invented cultural artefacts, door knockers, and candles.  Much like the diasporic experience, the migration of humans and artefacts from one culture to another is a phenomenon that we may use to reconsider structures of power. These elements and styles are arranged in a way that reveals the influence of fragmentation from online culture and aesthetics.  Through reference to real and invented ritual, these paintings consider the significance of spiritual and embedded cultural practices in determining how self-identity is formed.