Plato presents Henry Hung Chang: Island and Its Visitors. Henry Hung Chang spent his childhood in a Daoist temple in Taiwan, founded by his grandparents. The temple’s environment, in which religious practice, ritual, myth, and folk beliefs were woven into daily into life, continues to shape Chang’s visual language. Through richly layered imagery and ritual iconography rendered in watercolor on gesso, Chang invites viewers into a world where orientation dissolves and the sacred merges with the quotidian.
The exhibition is titled after a six-paneled series, Island and Its Visitors, embracing a non-narrative storytelling approach. Reassessing his upbringing during the rise of national identity in the island country of Taiwan — as well as his experience living in the US — Chang is drawn to the notion of the island as a mulilayered metaphor for a space where personal, societal, and natural harmony can be achieved.
