Ming Ying Hong
Exhibition: On view through October 3 at McMaster Gallery.
Public Lecture: October 2, 6:00 PM, MM 239
Closing Reception: October 3, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Ming Ying Hong is an interdisciplinary artist based in Starkville, Mississippi. She has exhibitied throughout the Unites States in spaces such as the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and the Ice Box Gallery in Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in many publications -- more recently, in MANIFEST Gallery's International Drawing Annual 11. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University.
Hong's work explores the limits of our knowledge and experience by questioning the way we define and categorize states of being. Bodily forms are depicted as masculine and feminine, dead and alive, aggressive and delicate. Explosions, another common motif, teeter on the razor thin edge of dissolution and whole. By combining these seemingly contradictory elements together, opposites which once defined each other overlap, ultimately dismantling the system in which one definition is priviledged over another. Masculinity no longer prevails over the feminine, strength no longer prevails over the delicate, and stability no longer prevails over the broken. Instead, the work encourages us to examine the in-between spaces of these binaries-- the spaces that fall outside of our clear-cut definitions and hierarchies. In examining these areas of uncertainty, a more complex spectrum of experience emerges.
