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“Perfidious Fidelity” to Paintings in Tuen
Mun
Sarah Maharaj’s 1994 essay, “Perfidious Fidelity:
the Untranslatability of the Other,” describes the figure of
translator as “tressing, cross-dressing, double-crossing,
treacherous.” The translator’s split loyalty between the source
language and the target language epitomizes the difficulties in
cultural translation, where the difficulties do not mean an utter
impossibility of translation but rather point to the necessity of
holding onto the tension between the self and the other. Complete
hybridity between different entities should be avoided at all
cost, as it only promotes stability and thus falls into the trap
of settling in sameness.
Stella Tang’s project in Lingnan University is also performing
“perfidious fidelity” on the medium of painting. Since the advent
of photography and “new media,” along with the recent surge of
mixed-media artworks, painting has become an obsolete medium
always in danger (or thrill) of being translated into something
other than itself. How then do paintings in the current show
demonstrate the split loyalty both to painting and other mediums?
The artist prepared fifty canvases, all in the size of 40 cm in
height and 45 cm in width, to be painted in her Lingnan studio by
her friends and acquaintances. For this project, she had taken a
photograph of generic landscape in the New Territories—the area
surrounding a four-lane road dotted with Hong Kong’s
signature-style pencil apartment buildings and trees—and then she
invited over forty participants to copy the photographic image
projected onto the canvas. Each participant was allowed to choose
which part of the image to include in the painting, the colors
with which to paint, and so on.
As Participant #35, I chose to focus on apartment buildings by
applying large, loose brush strokes. I did not apply intense
colors—I tried not to let my layer of paint “disturb” the color
tones of the original photograph. Once I was done painting, after
an hour or so, Stella removed the projected image from my canvas.
My painting suddenly looked naked—without the initial layer of
image that had sustained the form and structure of the scenery,
the painting now looks like blotches of undistinguishable grey and
earthy colors. For all fifty canvases, the relationship between
the original photograph and the painting is not that of
indexicality; each participant translated her own portion of the
photograph into her own painting, with different color schemes and
brush strokes. Each painting contains a fragment of the
photograph, as if to hold tight to the fleeting image of the
place.
The place, although it looks anonymous, is located only few meters
from the University campus in Tuen Mun. Through the framing of the
scene, the photograph is devoid of locational traits. Repeatedly
painted over fifty times, the scenery has obtained a life of its
own by linking the participants (the artist’s students at Lingnan
and the Hong Kong Art School, her friends, and Lingnan staff
members). The project allowed the participants to translate the
photograph into a painting, a place in Tuen Mun into someplace
else. The drastic differences between each one of fifty painterly
renderings creates a dynamic, imaginary scene of Tuen Mun. In
these paintings of the same location, no trace of sameness
resides. Rather, tense differences activate the artist
studio-cum-gallery space and the medium of painting.
Sohl Lee
Art Critic and Visiting Scholar at Lingnan University
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