Her works characteristically portray the female perspectives in all stages of life and the relationship between the individual and the rapid social changes taking place in China.
[2] Hong now holds tenure as a professor of Oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing.
[4] In 2023, she was part of the jury for the John Moores Painting Prize along with Alexis Harding, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Marlene Smith, and The White Pube.
In the history of Chinese art, women were often depicted engaged in everyday activities created by men who overlaid that subject with symbolic ramifications[4] – the female point of view was not a viable mode of creation.
[4] Her method of painting is immensely personal and has been criticized as seemingly mundane,[1] but she highlights the beauty in the intricacies of daily life, friendship, love and the impact of the environment on people.
These paintings make clear the possibilities to be mined within the subject and highlight the role of the contemporary woman in Chinese society.
This method was chosen to reproduce the atmosphere around traditional religious paintings as the piece works in tandem with the environment to create an overall feeling in those who view it.
[1] ‘Atrium’ was inspired by Giuseppe Maria Crespis’ ‘Trionfo di Ercole’[1] which exists on the ceiling of the Palozzo Pepoli in Bologna.
Hong places contemporary renderings of people against golden backdrops with the intention of making the viewer look more closely at those around them.
‘Romance of Spring’ was Hong’s response to the iconic masterpiece: ‘Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk’.
Hong used her tool of the trade, to connect the stories and does so by including news from recent years, to integrate (and juxtapose) the ancient against the contemporary.
[14] This results in the creation of a “Parallel World” – there are strange things in a derelict but oddly vivid colored garden and is a space that contradicts itself by design.
With ‘Garden of Dreams’ her previous interest in Surrealism has been reawakened and each piece has tinges of the style – common is her use of vivid color and expressive painterly stroke.
Previous work like ‘Golden Sky’ and ‘Romance of Spring’ most likely prompted Hong to create these paintings with the same amount of research and thought.