Tseng Chien-Ying 猩紅 Flamboyance, 2026

Flamboyance presents a close-up view of a gender-fluid figure whose elongated eye, rounded features, and enlarged ear recall Buddhist imagery. The face is richly adorned with piercings, gold jewellery, pearl-like beads, and spikes. These details bring the visual language of sacred ornament into contact with contemporary codes of body modification and fashion. Across the cheek, pink and purple flame-like forms extend like an ornamental earring, reinforcing the title’s double sense of brilliance and excess.

Working across ink and gouache on paper, as well as ceramic sculpture, Chien-Ying brings traditional East Asian materials and visual languages into dialogue with contemporary questions of the body, spirituality, and social tension. Drawing on historical techniques from across Asia, especially baimiao — line drawing without shading — and jiaocaihua, literally “glue-colour painting,” he places present-day subjects within forms that carry the weight of older artistic and religious traditions.