Li Hei Di

I paint in the way that I experience life.

Leaving home at a young age, the separation of homeland and the newfound life often make me feel a split sense of belonging. Memories and stories have discontinued and metamorphosed as the locations change. Life has become inconsistent; people and objects have become unrecognizable; dreams and memories have been meshed, scattered, and irretrievably lost; time and space have been sliced into many layers, no longer linear, no longer in one piece. I learned to digest all the pieces through painting. 

In the past year, I have been drawn by the mysterious form of water, what is above and what is hidden under, creating pockets of worlds that are interconnected, resembling the multi-dimensional form of Yinyang. The way water is being contained in a vessel is like how our flesh vigorously holds in unspoken truth, anxiously facing the danger of being pierced, broken or flooded.

 ​​From ambiguity to eroticism, comes back to romance, imbued with fear and melancholy; the sensuality of seduction manifested through the freedom of mark-making, choreographed into a mating dance between fictionalised bodies. Transforming between abstraction and figuration, the imageries mimic the veiled raw desire struggling, trapped under social norms. 

Every mark carries its truth, though some are painted over, some are erased, and some are broken, they still exist simultaneously in different layers of reality. To fragmentate, to paint over, to erase, my process in painting is a metaphor for the constant battle for acceptance. Not only to accept the rigid social/cultural/sexual identities, but more to accept those inconvenient but very humanly sentiments; as if to accept the way each stroke falls onto the canvas. 

(Painting to the left: 'The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because of His Many Moods', oil on canvas, 101.5x112cm, photo credit: Public Gallery)