Yongqi Tang’s Visceral Paintings of Violence and Healing
Yongqi Tang, Opening the Venus (2024). Mixed media on canvas. 47 x 57 in. Photo courtesy of Latitude Gallery.
“By intertwining mythological and personal narratives, I would like to present and juxtapose the timeless body (Venus) and the ephemeral body (myself). They are distinct yet inseparable from one another.”
— Yongqi Tang, 2024
Yongqi Tang’s most recent exhibition at Latitude Gallery boldly reimagines Venus, not as a distant, idealized figure, but as an exposed, vulnerable body. In our conversation, Tang explained her engagement with Venus as a site of rupture, scrutinizing and transforming the goddess from an image of perfection into a visceral, bleeding orifice. InThe Open Venus, Venus is not untouched by violence or pain; rather, she is depicted as a vessel in processes of leaking, breaking, and healing.
In Tang’s paintings, surfaces transition from smooth to rough, cracked to raw, embodying the duality of tenderness and violence inherent in the body’s experience. Through layers of thick, raw oil paint juxtaposed with gravelly textures, she stages a poetic intervention that solicits reflections on the body’s vulnerability and endurance. These textures also reflect Tang's deep engagement with historical painters, who employed unique devices to capture both the strength and vulnerability of the body: Botticelli’s love-filled renderings of flesh, Vittore Carpaccio’s knights conquering barren land, and William Blake’s ethereal, joyful fairies.
Tang’s own experience with scoliosis surgery further informs her newest paintings—a body of work marked by personal and physical invasion, anguish, and resilience. In her interpretation of Venus, she channels this catharsis and exposes the body’s frailty and strength in the process of recovery. Blood, a recurring motif in works like The Wound (2024) and Watercolor Study for Threading the Venus (2024), embodies the abject realities of bodily transformation. Whether lost through invasive surgery or during recurrent leakages experienced by the fertile, Tang does not depict blood as a direct symbol of pain but rather as a signifier of the strain required to survive. Yongqi Tang’s The Open Venus presents the body not as an object of desire, but as a raw reality, perpetually redefined by both internal and external forces.
Installation view of Yongqi Tang: The Open Venus. Photo courtesy of the artist and Latitude Gallery.
Clare Gemima: The Open Venus confronts Botticelli’s serene, idealized portrayal of the goddess by exposing the underlying violence in her origin—born from the blood and sperm of Uranus. In Greek mythology, Venus was conceived when Cronus severed Uranus’s genitals and cast them into the sea. Reflecting on your own experience with scoliosis surgery and the physical reconstruction of your body, how do you see these mythological and personal narratives intertwining in your work? In what ways has your own bodily transformation influenced how you explore vulnerability and resilience in this series?
Yongqi Tang: I once believed that mind and body were two distinct and separate foundations; it appeals to common sense that the mind defines us, while the body is subordinate. I was rather mindless about the material side of myself. My view changed a lot after I went through surgery; it took pain and tears for me to realize that my mind and body are one, and when a person’s body is transformed, so is their mind and vice versa. It was a holistic change for me. The paintings portray my body’s current status. It has been wounded and has healed, and it will still change, which affects how I attach to the world. By intertwining mythological and personal narratives, I would like to present and juxtapose the timeless body (Venus) and the ephemeral body (myself). They are distinct yet inseparable from one another.
CG: The tension between modesty and horror is central to The Open Venus, where you contrast soft, flowing lines with sharp, fragmented edges. How is the mythological figure of Venus representative of your vision for the body?
YT: I have only discovered the violent origin of Venus very recently. We mostly find, in the classical portrayal of Venus's body, a beauty that is transcendental, cold, and ideal. This perfected image implies Platonic idealism: The physical objects we perceive in the material world are merely imperfect copies or "shadows" of perfect, unchanging archetypes that exist in a higher realm, accessible only through reason and thought. Sometimes, we idealize so much that we neglect and proactively conceal certain imperfections. I empathize with the version of Venus that emerged from blood. I imagine her breaking from the castrated testicles, struggling like a baby chick.
CG: In Opening the Venus (2024), I noticed the nod to Matisse’s La Danse (1910) in the background. Are you playing with a contrast between the dancers' fluid motion and a sense of immobility in your own figure? Do you see the spirit or force in the work as an energy breaking through paralysis, echoing Venus’s struggle to emerge—and your own during recovery?
YT: I am glad that you noticed that! In fact, it is paying tribute to William Blake’s Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786), which Matisse also referenced in La Danse. The lying figure references the dead woman in Botticelli’s Story of Nastagio Degli Onesti—Part Two (1483). In addition to the contrast between fluidity and immobility, I also wanted to present the contrast between the physicality of a real body and the ghosts of ideal beauty. It is not only about the pain of recovery, but also the realization of how valuable it is to maintain my connection with my own body. I also wanted to convey some of my self-deprecating, intrusive feelings concerning my appearance.
Yongqi Tang, The Wound (2024). Oil on wooden panel. 16 x 16 in. Photo courtesy of Latitude Gallery.
CG: Your paintings, particularly The Wound (2024), explore the deep connection between beauty and pain. You bring this idea to life through bold, heavy brushstrokes and richly textured layers of oil paint. This piece resonates with themes of fragility, strength, resilience, and triumph amid physical strain. Can you elaborate on how you use texture on your canvas to convey the emotional depth and physical trials of the body?
YT: Texture is not just an aesthetic choice. It also carries meaning. For example, I used the crackled paste as the ground of the painting Persephone. I was thinking about the paintings and sculptures eroded away by time and the tragic destiny of my main subject.
In The Wound, the texture’s heaviness suggests the physicality and depth of the wound, which was inspired by Rembrandt’s Lucretia (1666), among other wounded female bodies portrayed in antique and classical art.
Yongqi Tang, Persephone (2024). Oil on canvas.16 x 16 in. Photo courtesy of Latitude Gallery.
CG: Considering these symbolic choices behind the various textures you use, I noticed the rough, cement-like finish in Knight Peeing in a Landscape. Could you elaborate on the symbolic significance of texture in this piece specifically?
YT: The painting is a playful twist on portraits created throughout art history, such as Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of King Philip IV (1624) and Young Knight in a Landscape by Vitorre Carpaccio (1510). The portrayal of a proud male figure in a landscape implies that land and nature are made for him to conquer. I painted the knight in the act of public urination because I often see men peeing in public spaces, which reminds me of dogs marking their territory. It’s a satirical commentary on masculinity; I painted this texture differently to contrast the delicacy of flesh with the coarse ground.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Lucretia (1666). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
CG: Reflecting on your impressive solo exhibition, Lullaby at Jupiter in Miami last year, I'm curious about how it has influenced your current work. Do the themes inspired by 17th-century ghost stories, the Middle Ages, and artists like Goya carry over into The Open Venus?
YT: They are two separate bodies of work, and I intend to revisit the stories I explored while creating Lullaby for my next exhibition. The strange tales from that show focussed on the fantasies of 17th-century Chinese literati. The paintings from The Open Venus are based on Western mythology. Though they differ in many ways, many stories carry the same undertone of moral propaganda, while others epitomize societal changes. I am interested in how I can repurpose early allegories and narratives like these in my future work.
CG: Looking closely at your piece, The Blood, I noticed that the sides of its panel are covered in fingerprints marked with browny-red oil paint in a distressed, almost half deliberate, half impulsive application. What made you decide to show this aspect of your process as part of the final painting?
YT: The fingerprints and drippings of paint are just traces of my hand—these mark my unconscious movements. I moved the paintings a lot and tested the color on the sides of my panel, but I didn't feel the need to hide this. I like to show the temporality and the trace of time in my work, which includes my small studies, collages atop drawings, corrections, overlaid forms, and the accumulation of paint. When I look at other people’s paintings, I enjoy seeing spaces that are not quite finished so I can pick the artist’s brain on how they work. I am less interested in paintings that are too refined and detailed. I like to see expressive gestures and visceral brushwork.
Yongqi Tang, Watercolor Study for Threading the Venus (2024). Watercolor on paper. 4 x 6 in. Photo courtesy of Latitude Gallery.
CG: I’d like to know how you incorporate your preparatory sketches into your overarching practice. How do smaller studies, like Watercolor Study for Threading the Venus, influence your approach to creating larger oil paintings? What insights do your preparatory sketches provide that your larger works do not, and vice versa?
YT: I usually begin by creating tiny watercolor and pencil sketches to develop the overarching framework of my paintings. I like to make many sketches that revolve around the same idea and eventually choose one or two to make a large painting out of. The process helps bring about the best outcome, as I can propose different “solutions” and have more options to play around with.
CG: You also have two other Threading the Venus works—one made using charcoal, pastel, and collage on paper, and the other with oil on canvas. The main difference between the two was your treatment of the huddled maids in the background of the image—they are hidden by the main reclining figure in your oil composition, but they are traced in wispy contours in the work on paper. How does your use of medium affect the way you render form?
YT: I treat painting and drawing surfaces very differently. The drawings are preliminary studies for the paintings, but fundamentally speaking, I see my drawings as independent works because the medium comes with its own demands and challenges. I find it somewhat easier to expose temporality in paintings, but with drawings, it takes a different logic to express it effectively, as you only have one layer—once you erase, you erase everything. Therefore, I recently began to incorporate collages and cutouts to achieve more layers in my works on paper. I am very excited about exploring this technique further.
Yongqi Tang, Dog Pooping in a Landscape (2024). Oil on canvas, 36 x 41 in (diptyque). Photo courtesy of Latitude Gallery.
CG: Dog Pooping in a Landscape (2024) features an enlarged reappearance of the canine that originally appears in the bottom left corner of Knight Peeing in a Landscape. What motivated your decision to focus on this subject specifically, and what influenced your choice to install the diptych’s panels detached from each other?
YT: After I’d finished the urine painting, I thought I should paint another one to complement it. From a bodily perspective, humans are simply animals. When peeing and pooping, we are the most vulnerable, and it’s also a way of marking territory. I chose to paint these scenes with a serious tone, separating the serious face of the dog and its pooping butt to heighten the dark humor within the subject.
CG: What’s next after The Open Venus exhibition? Where can we expect to see your work in the future, and how do you envision your practice evolving from here?
YT: In November, I’ll be showing with MOU PROJECTS at West Bund Art & Design in Shanghai and participating in a group exhibition with 193 Gallery in Paris. My next solo show, planned for 2025, will be with MOU PROJECTS in Hong Kong. Alongside traditional wall-hung paintings and drawings, I plan to experiment with new formats, such as screen paintings that have had multifunctional roles throughout the long history of Chinese life. Compared to traditional formats of paintings, screen paintings also serve to physically block the room and change how people interact with the space. In the past, screens have also become emperors' bodily extensions. When meeting important guests, an emperor often sits in front of a painted screen. You could think of this as some kind of pre-Zoom background. The screens add to the aura and authority of those who sit in front of them.
If I have another solo project, I also want to explore The Open Venus further and see how it evolves in a larger space. With each solo exhibition, I’ve pushed my creative boundaries, so I’m eager to keep challenging myself in future projects.
Yongqi Tang: The Open Venus was on view at Latitude Gallery from October 11 to November 10, 2024.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
