International Space Station is a five-meter long canvas almost entirely dominated by a color field of black dots, signifying the vastness of space. The ISS is reduced to its skeletal contours in the far left of the canvas, delineated by faint wisps of color in glinting, muted shades. The earth below is similarly pared down, to a black arc streaked across the bottom of the pictorial surface. One is reminded of the largely invisible and increasingly inescapable infrastructures of surveillance, WIFI networks and virtual technologies that have so powerfully reshaped our experience of contemporary everyday life.

While the urban metropolis has been the main subject of her paintings thus far, works such as International Space Station indicate her conceptual as well as artistic and technical shift towards an expanded definition of architecture, or rather, landscape. Indeed, Cui has always considered herself a ‘landscape painter’ above all else.

—text adapted from Dr. Wenny Teo, 2019