Hungry Women

Hungry Women is a limited edition series of rapaciously drawn images of gluttonous Asian women. As in all her works, Wong explores the relationship between creation and consumption — the satiation and satisfaction they provide, and the escapist, sometimes addictive pleasures of both.

Colours, textures, and materials become flavours or ingredients in her quest for delicious images. The palette, an array of warm, sugary, sometimes fluorescent hues, evokes pleasure, hedonism, the colourful aisles of a brightly lit supermarket or prettily confected cakes lined up in a shop window; oil pastels, with a texture reminiscent of butter, grease, and cream, allow for a tactile, messy process of drawing akin to gleefully devouring with one’s hands. The pleasure here is both visual and visceral.

Wong’s drawings recall Evelyne Axell’s Ice-cream, Vera Chytilova’s Daisies, Natalia LL’s Consumer Art, and Roxana Halls’ Appetite series, all of which she cites as key inspiration. Like these artists, she is subverting notions and images of womanhood that have insisted on decorum and propriety, centralising a female pleasure that is unapologetically sloppy, sensual, and sexual. Much of her inspiration and imagery however, is drawn from the ever-expanding visual glut of the online world: mukbang livestreams, films, advertising, and social media posts and reels. Through these drawings, she raises questions about empowerment and objectification, seduction and disgust, abundance and excess.

Hungry Women (a selection out of 120),
acrylic, oil, and oil pastel on board,
8” x 10” each,
2020-2022