A Post-pandemic Homage to Wu Guangzhong’s Faces Unchanged, 2021

向吳冠中「朱顏未改」的後疫情致敬

This mural is inspired by Wu Guangzhong’s 吳冠中 painting Faces Unchanged 「朱顏未改」 created in 2001 and donated to the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2010.  Reportedly it was Wu’s own favourite work that he used to hang up in his home and was the last piece of his whole donation to Hong Kong.  The title of this work was inspired by the famous poem Fair Lady Yu 虞美人 by Li Yu 李煜 (937-978) which expresses the author’s sorrow of losing his kingdom.  The key line of the poem describes Li’s clinging to his memory of the palaces lost: “Carved balustrades and jade ornaments should still be there; Changed only are the pink faces fair…(雕欄玉砌應猶在，只是朱顏改。) [1]”  By alerting to the faces unchanged, Wu, however, seemed to revert the feelings of Li to express the triumphant idea of art over human affairs.  Hence the expression of the multifold bright colour dots – each representing perhaps a human face – and the idea of these being unchanged is perhaps the best expression of our collective view of the post-pandemic world.

[1] English translation by Frank C Yue: http://chinesepoetryinenglishverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/when-will-spring-flowrs-and-autumn-moon.html