Artist Faye Wei Wei’s stories of longing, told through symbol-laden canvases
The British-Chinese artist’s monumental oil paintings blend love, mythology and lush flora, inviting viewers into immersive fantasy worlds
British-Chinese artist Faye Wei Wei remembers how, when she was growing up in south London, she would spend her time drawing while her siblings played video games. At other times, she would head outside to pick flowers and leaves, fascinated by their textures and forms. As a child, she spent summers in Hong Kong too, where her parents are from, creating drawings inspired by the city’s tall buildings and mountainous landscapes. By the time she was a teenager, she was experimenting with acrylics and oil paint.
Fast-forward to the present, and Wei Wei is quickly gaining recognition for her large-scale romantic paintings filled with symbolism, lush flora and sensuous figures. The momentum began just two years after she graduated, in her early 20s, from UCL’s Slade School of Fine Art, with British Vogue naming her “one to watch”. Since then, she has exhibited across Europe, Asia and the US, and become known for her collaborations with fashion designers Simone Rocha and Hannah Weiland.
Wei Wei sees painting as a form of dance: both a performance and an intimate ritual. She often works on monumental canvases so that people appear full size. “Because my work is figurative, I really want to feel the human scale,” she explained to G-irl.com. “You’re making something come alive that looks like a human. It’s a really intimate thing. You’re totally alone and lost with this person who you’re forming out of nothing.”
Working with oil paint, she builds thin, translucent layers that give her work an ethereal quality. Horses, flowers, snakes and stars are recurring symbols. She describes her process as akin to creating a pond of water upon which she lays out objects that float atop the surface. By creating this amorphous environment, she underscores the idea of her works as spaces for dreams or fantasy as opposed to reality.
Wei Wei is a magpie when it comes to sources of inspiration. She often goes to museums to draw and collects old photographs. She is fascinated by Japanese Noh theatre, poetry and medieval illuminated manuscripts. She describes her process as a form of “personal mythmaking” or world-building, creating immersive narratives in which viewers can lose themselves.