An introspective trip to 'The World of Saha'

Yu Hong’s solo exhibition, “The World of Saha,” is currently on display at Long Museum (West Bund) through May 5.

The exhibition’s title refers to a Buddhist expression of great importance to the artist, meaning “the world to be endured,” in which anyone who suffers is a prisoner of his or her own personal desires.

More than a retrospective, the exhibit is envisioned as an “introspective” into Yu’s unique and wide-ranging vocabulary.

The display unfolds as a visual opera into four different acts, revealing several parallel universes that subdivide into distinct periods: “Time of Rebirth,” her lifelong commitment to a series of “Portraits,” “Half-Hundred Mirrors” and “Witness to Growth.”

The daunting canvas, installation and VR all combine to impress visitors from an angle of a female artist toward the vicissitudes of time, her own life and society in the past several decades.

Born in Xi’an in 1966, Yu studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and graduated with a post-graduate degree from the oil painting department in 1996.

From the start, she received training in realism painting, which over time translated into her own individual aesthetic language.

The core subject of her paintings has always been human nature, how people grow up in society and how our surroundings affect the way we think and feel.

Her work was also featured in “Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World (2017)” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York).

Date: Through May 5 (closed on Monday), 10am-6pm

Avenue: Long Museum (West Bund)

Address: 3398 Longteng Ave.