Loyal Compatriots Arise and Fight Back
Collection:UAL Art Collection
Date: 2023
Artist: Hao Ming (Chinese)
Dimensions:
107 x 86cm
Medium: Acrylic, marker and spray paint on canvas
Object number: UAC 1116
DescriptionHao Ming studied MA Fine Art: Painting at Camberwell College of Arts. He says:
'Painting is my main form of expression. I also explore diverse techniques and materials to enhance my practice.
I'm deeply intrigued by politics in the internet era and how it visualizes history. Being a millennial, I feel at home with this approach, as it floods my mind with information, exposing social crises and past political events. My art draws heavily from internet images, news photos, memes, and graphics, portraying current events and historical archives. These pieces lack a linear narrative but compress into flat, screen-like visuals, connecting events across time.
I'm also influenced by pop art and culture, using cheerful, cartoonish characters and vibrant colours that contrast with underlying cruelty. Symbolic graphics and unruly painting techniques break boundaries, adding expressiveness and material features. This colourful style softens the seriousness of the political subjects'.
Hao Ming says in this painting he has 'Painted some characters and slogans from the Chinese Cultural Revolution propaganda materials, using a cartoonish visual language, as I have done in the past. The background features a map from a specific location in Taiwan, along with modern graphic symbols commonly used for marking locations in map apps. Depicting the ambitions of state power by combining images from different eras using a similar visual language, I aim to showcase the changing visual aesthetics over time, while emphasizing that the underlying ideology and mindset behind these visuals are not as time-bound as the visuals themselves. Through my artistic approach, I try to unify symbols and spectacle in different times, using a visual language of my own choosing, allowing people to see the consistency of ideology masked by visuals across different eras'.
'Painting is my main form of expression. I also explore diverse techniques and materials to enhance my practice.
I'm deeply intrigued by politics in the internet era and how it visualizes history. Being a millennial, I feel at home with this approach, as it floods my mind with information, exposing social crises and past political events. My art draws heavily from internet images, news photos, memes, and graphics, portraying current events and historical archives. These pieces lack a linear narrative but compress into flat, screen-like visuals, connecting events across time.
I'm also influenced by pop art and culture, using cheerful, cartoonish characters and vibrant colours that contrast with underlying cruelty. Symbolic graphics and unruly painting techniques break boundaries, adding expressiveness and material features. This colourful style softens the seriousness of the political subjects'.
Hao Ming says in this painting he has 'Painted some characters and slogans from the Chinese Cultural Revolution propaganda materials, using a cartoonish visual language, as I have done in the past. The background features a map from a specific location in Taiwan, along with modern graphic symbols commonly used for marking locations in map apps. Depicting the ambitions of state power by combining images from different eras using a similar visual language, I aim to showcase the changing visual aesthetics over time, while emphasizing that the underlying ideology and mindset behind these visuals are not as time-bound as the visuals themselves. Through my artistic approach, I try to unify symbols and spectacle in different times, using a visual language of my own choosing, allowing people to see the consistency of ideology masked by visuals across different eras'.
