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Distilled Desires — On Love and

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Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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Kaitlin Chan

A cartoonist and curator from Hong Kong, who co-curated “Hon Chi-fun: A Story of Light” at
Asia Society Hong Kong Center during her tenure (2017–2019) as assistant curator.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

Hon Chi-fun (1922–2019), a pioneering modernist of Hong Kong art, was best known for his
otherworldly airbrush paintings that marked a dramatic shift from representational to abstract
imagery in the city’s painting scene. However, the passionate undercurrents of desire underlying

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his works, and how his work intersects with sexuality and personal expression, are under-explored

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in the scholarly realm. This paper will explore how Hon’s abstractions of human bodies lay the
foundations for the corporeal form to be further explored in Hong Kong art, and deconstructed

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notions of propriety and respectability. 

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Hon’s Early Life (1922–1960)

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Hon was born in Pok Fu Lam in 1922, the eldest of his family’s eight children. His father worked

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as one of Hong Kong’s first taxi-cab drivers, his mother a homemaker. His parents did not allow
limited finances to dissuade Hon’s interest in culture, initially enrolling him in traditional Chinese
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private school and even amassing a small amateur antiquities collection. From his early familiarity
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with classic Confucian texts, to his cross-cultural, bi-lingual education at the prestigious Wah
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Yan College, Hon was a self-initiated artist, eager to build on his career despite not having had
the opportunity to attend university. He excelled academically and had grand plans to attend the
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University of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Hon’s graduation from secondary school coincided with
the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Hong Kong in 1941. He subsequently spent his twenties
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and early thirties working on Shanghai and Guangdong in the export/import trade, where his
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family had sought refuge from the war. In a personal essay, he refers to this decade of his life as “a
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period of loss and ambiguity.”1   

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Hon returned to Hong Kong in 1956, joining the Post Office and getting married that same year.
He began painting as an escape from the routines of everyday life. His first paintings reflected
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what was in vogue in Hong Kong at the time: plein air landscapes capturing the craggy shoreline
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of Sai Kung and quaint village homes at the foot of Lion’s Rock. (Plates 1.1 and 1.2) During his
day job as a postal inspector, he sped around on his motorcycle, searching for the next scenic
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vista. A “Sunday painter,” he honed his artistic skills  by painting from observation  on nights
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and weekends,  alongside a group of fellow emerging artists. Not long after, his works were
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included in group exhibitions at spaces such as St. Joseph’s Cathedral. After all, this was before
any purpose-built institution for art even existed in Hong Kong. Hon and his peers would soon
©2

be part of the generation that opened possibilities for professional exhibitions and tertiary art
education in the city. Each presentation of Hon’s work buoyed his ambitions to develop his
creative voice.

1 Hon Chi-fun, “My Own Story,” in Space and Passion: The Art of Hon Chi-fun (Hong Kong: Choi Yan-chi,
2000): 20.

228
 Kaitlin Chan

Hong Kong was then a Crown Colony of the British Empire, and it was up to Hon and his peers
to begin dialogues about the purpose and necessity of art and culture. Hon joined the “Modern
Literature and Art Association” (1958–1964) and then the modernist collective “Circle Art Group”

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ng
(1964–1972), the latter of which encouraged and inspired him to question representation and

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begin creating work with more opaque modes of signification. These groups were formed out of
a desire to produce publications and exhibitions that enlivened the city’s cultural scene. Their

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regular meetings were lively and passionate, filled with debates on trends and styles in writing

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and art. Being around like-minded peers emboldened Hon to expand his repertoire and sources of

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inspiration. Hon’s generation, in the words of his partner Choi Yan-chi, “was underprivileged and
lacking in opportunities. They tried their best, to make the impossible happen.”2   Besides Wucius

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Wong, no one in the Circle Art Group was trained in art at the university level. They referred to

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themselves as amateur painters, as they all maintained full-time jobs outside their art practice. Due

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to their pioneering practices in abstraction and their connections to the rise of formal institutions

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in Hong Kong, the Circle Art Group is considered to be first modernist avant-garde art group in
Hong Kong.
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The Circle Art Group’s self-education was high-spirited and executed collectively. They ordered
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Artforum in the mail, poring over the obvious influence of East Asian calligraphy on Abstract
Expressionist artists like Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. Frequenting the only art bookstore
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in town, Zi Yun Shu Po in Tsim Sha Tsui, they would read voraciously (in art journalist Chloe
Chu’s words, “breaking the books’ staples”3   ) until they were kicked out. In the 1950s, there were
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few newspapers or magazines in Hong Kong wrote about art extensively. Everything felt possible
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as Hon and his peers pioneered a culture of organizing exhibitions and discussing art on a critical
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and professional level.

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Swinging Sixties and Hong Kong Modernism (1960s)

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After five years of painting landscapes, Hon’s artistic career took a marked shift. Inspired by the
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New Ink movement led by Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan), as well as the bright Pop aesthetic of
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Andy Warhol, he began painting large, mixed-media ink works, before moving into silkscreen
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on canvas. Overlaying Buddhist sutras with personal photographs, news headlines and images of
go-go dancers, his works were bold exercises in configuring an individual at the nexus of various
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convergences: Hong Kong, China and the British Empire, Abstract Expressionism, Calligraphy and
American Pop. Hon’s experimentations were well-received, with his art career flourishing in the
swinging sixties. In 1962, He participated in the inaugural group exhibition Hong Kong Art Today
at the City Museum and Art Gallery, which later became the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 1965.

2 Choi Yan-chi, interview by writer, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020.

3 Chloe Chu, “Full Circle: Hon Chi Fun,” in ArtAsiaPacific (May/June 2018): 63.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

He was invited to hold his first solo exhibition at Chatham Galleries, the first gallery in Hong
Kong, opened by American-born teacher Dorothy Swan in 1962. The Circle Art Group continued
to participate in exhibitions together, with their works reaching as far as São Paulo 4   and Manila. 5   

.
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Hon and his peers in the Circle Art Group continually questioned their Chinese heritage with
regards to their Hong Kong context, engaging in heated discussions how cultural influences and

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iconography played out in their work. Some of Hon’s darker compositions from the beginning

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of the 1960s, which utilized large brushstrokes in Chinese ink and found stone objects (Plate 2),

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reflect this alienation. As Man Kit-wah Eva writes, “The painter’s work opens up a ‘distantiating’
act of meditation and functions as the poetry of an alienated and displaced subject.”6   In addition

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to configuring their cultural identities amidst British colonization, members of the Circle Art

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Group, including Hon, also sought to challenge another taboo in art at the time: the expression

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of sexual desire and depictions of human bodies.

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Sexual Liberation, New York City and Post-Fellowship Life (1970s)
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The last year that the Circle Art Group exhibited together was in 1972. Hon was back in Hong
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Kong after his John D. Rockefeller III Cultural Fellowship in New York City in 1970. This
fellowship was one of several opportunities that changed Hon’s life forever. At age forty-six in
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the year 1969, Hon travelled to London and Berlin upon the invitation of the British Council to
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visit museums and exhibit his own paintings. This journey marked Hon’s first time seeing classical
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and modern Western paintings in person, and it inspired him to push the material parameters of
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his work and the picture plane. Then came the JDR III Fellowship, which named Hon as the first
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artist from Hong Kong to receive the prestigious opportunity to study in New York City. Having a
sustained interest in silkscreen-printing, he decided to enroll in Pratt Institute to study lithography
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and etching. In New York, he participated in several group exhibitions, and even hosted a solo
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presentation of his prints at Willard Gallery, founded by Marian Willard Johnson. Hon finally felt
included in the international circuits of art-making which he had long-admired from his home base
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in Hong Kong.
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After his studies at Pratt had concluded, Hon sought to extend his travels before his return. Making
trips to Europe, South America and South Asia in 1972 allowed him to meet influential artists such
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4 Wucius Wong was a member of the Taiwanese delegation in the 1961 São Paulo Biennale. Michelle Wong,
“In Focus: Circle Art Group,” in Ocula , March 23, 2018. https://ocula.com/magazine/reports/in-focus-
circle-art-group/.
5 The Luz Gallery hosted exhibitions of Circle Art Group’s work in 1966 and 1967. Wong, “In Focus.”
6 Man Kit-wah Eva, “The Notion of ‘Orientalism’ in the Modernization Movement of Chinese Painting of
Hong Kong Artists in 1960s: The Case of Hon Chi-fun,” in Filozofski vestnik XXII, no. 2 (2001): 164.

230
 Kaitlin Chan

as the famed British sculptor Henry Moore and celebrated Chinese painter Zao Wuki in Paris. He
also admired the ruins of Buddhist temples in India, Nepal and Kashmir, which resonated with
his desires for spiritual and emotional nourishment. With renewed vigor and inspiration from

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ng
having lived abroad for the first time, he began his next chapter in Hong Kong painting with air

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brush (spray paint). He had grown his close-cropped hair long, and started wearing flared jeans
everywhere. When attending Pratt Institute in New York, he became fascinated with the graffiti

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adorning subway cars and buildings. Bringing this technique back to Asia, he sought to define

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a new mode of art-making while personally dealing with the fallout from the end of his first

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marriage and the disbandment of the Circle Art Group.

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It was during this moment of loss that Choi Yan-chi (1949–) entered Hon’s life. Choi had just

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held her first solo exhibition at the Hong Kong USIS Gallery, which awarded her a scholarship to

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further her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An ambitious, inquisitive young

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artist, she had studied under Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan) as part of the Hong Kong University
Extramural Short Courses, and became enthralled with the world of artists, who all seemed to
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lead fascinating lives. Encouraged by her family, she devoured issues of New Currents 7   and The
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Cape of Good Hope , 8   magazines published by the Modern Literature and Art Association featuring
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criticism and poetry. Despite the challenges of maintaining a long-distance relationship, Choi and
Hon began a mutually supportive partnership that would last the rest of Hon’s days on earth.
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Hon had visited the world’s first Erotic Art exhibition 9   in the summer of 1969, the year of the moon
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landing and the infamous Woodstock music festival. Drawing upon the raw sexual energy expressed
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in the artworks he saw in Hamburg, as well as the Federico Fellini films he watched with Choi
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such as Blow Up and 8½ at Studio One, in the seventies Hon began painting works with allusions
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to female genitalia; some subtle, others more explicit. He was also inspired by the Buddhist temple
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carvings during his post-fellowship travels, which for him proved that the spiritual and sexual
selves could be intertwined. Far from simply titillating, Hon’s erotic airbrush paintings read as
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explorations into the origins of life. For example, in Chasm Forever (1971) (Plate 3) Hon depicts
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a round and corporeal bodily opening in cool tones of blue, floating in an orb at the center of the
composition. Combining the 1970s-zeitgeist bohemian spirit with a surreal, biomorphic approach,
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Hon’s ethereal airbrush strokes render the human body as if it is beyond the earthly realm.
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020
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7 New Currents was published by the “Modern Literature and Art Association Hong Kong” from 1959-1960
(six issues in total). For more information, see: https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/archive/hong-kong-
art-history-research-project-1958-64-the-modern-literature-and-art-association
8 The Cape of Good Hope ran for thirteen issues in total in the early 1960s.
9 Leung Po-shan Anthony and Bernard Luk, eds., Modern Art in a Colony: Narrated by Hon Chi-fun at the
Millennium (York, Toronto: York Centre for Asian Research, York University, 2008): 114.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

It is important to consider how Hon and his peers were influenced at this time by calls to disregard
moral doctrines and liberate oneself. Hippie culture had arrived in Hong Kong in full-force, with
The Beatles playing in every club and mini-skirts and bell-bottoms galore. Hon watched Luchino

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Visconti’s The Stranger (1967), which featured a protagonist thinking both about his father’s

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death, and of sexual desire. The movie expressed an unpredictable, passionate current of emotions
that Hon and his peers, including Choi, identified with strongly. Hong Kong artists became eager

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to explore sexuality and desire in their artworks, with Cheung Yee(1936-2019) sculpting vulva-

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like forms in white granite 10   and Irene Chou (1924–2011) depicting biomorphic forms in detailed

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and expressive ink paintings that some scholars relate to imagery of the uterus or the womb.11   
Despite international currents of sexual freedom, Hong Kong could still be described at the

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time as puritanical, with the vast majority of schools being overseen by Catholic and Protestant

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missionaries, resulting in a lack of sexual education, plus cultural norms around sexuality being

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rarely-discussed in Cantonese and Chinese households. Within this context, Hon and his peers’

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forays into art examining sexuality were not only taboo, but largely unprecedented.

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Like the protagonist of The Stranger, Hon was struggling with inheriting his parents’ traditional
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values of purity and self-restraint, and seeking to express himself in ways that were at odds with
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what he had been taught. In many ways, his paintings exploring sexual desire and expression stem
from his suppressed emotions, as releases of agony and ecstasy that he usually kept hidden.12   While
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most scholarship about Hon has been devoted to philosophical, spiritual and cultural questions
embedded in his paintings, some critics have referenced how passion, and love, were central themes
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for Hon. In his essay for Hon’s 2007 retrospective at The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
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Professor Pei-kai Cheng highlights the erotic undertones to Hon’s circles. “Hon’s roundness is
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not a circle of geometric definition nor the simplest form in mathematics. The painter lives a life
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that is full of worldly love and lust… Therefore, we can see the roundness of condensed lust and
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compressed lust; full of strength, full of tension.”13   

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In “Star Gazer,” an essay for Hon’s 1987 exhibition “Over and Yonder” at The University of Hong
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Kong, scholar and gallerist Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang) writes, “For Hon, the sixties were
a decade of awakening as well as intense anxiety. He plunged into all kinds of experiments with
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the mind: existentialism, mysticism, rebellion against social and sexual codes and so forth… A
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suppressed sexual implication lies underneath many of Hon’s paintings. Sexual energy, as potential
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chaos, suppressed by an impersonal icon that is perfectly cool in its geometric sanity, gives Hon’s
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10 Here, I am referring to Cheung’s artwork COLUMN (1973), an over meter tall white granite pillar with
yonic folds and clitoral imagery.
11 Man Kit-wah Eva, “The Universe Is My Body,” in A World Within: The Art and Inspiration of Irene Chou ,
eds. Katherine Don and Joyce Hei-ting Wong, (Hong Kong: Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 2019): 60 –75.
12 Choi Yan- chi, interview by author, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020.
13 Cheng Pei-kai, “Aesthetic Chinese-ness in Hon Chi-fun’s Paintings,” in Space and Passion (Hong Kong:
Choi Yan-chi, 2000): 159.

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 Kaitlin Chan

pictures internal strength.”14    

Hon himself was opaque about these themes. In discussion with Shum Long-tin as part of Asia Art

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Archive and the Hong Kong Museum of Art’s “Hong Kong Art History Research Pilot Project,”

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Hon noted that while some of his works are undeniably charged with sexual energy, producing
erotic works “was not his intention.”15   Now that Hon’s life and artworks have been introduced and

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contextualized, it is time to turn towards the works themselves for further analysis.

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The Origins of Life in Hon’s Chasm Imagery

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Circles became a major motif in Hon’s artworks towards the end of the 1960s. With his iconic red-

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and-green triptych Bath of Fire (1968), (Plate 4) he cemented circles as a device through which he
could layer and combine streams of visual and textual imagery ranging from the personal (diaries)
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through to the philosophical (Confucian edicts). In the 1970s, he began splitting the geometric
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circle into two halves, as well as painting round spheres with dark, corporeal recesses down the
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middle. Charting Hon’s transition from flat circles to bodily orbs reveals a development in the
ideas he was seeking to excavate in his artworks.
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The silkscreen print Time Untold (1974) depicts a blurred grey circle, filling the square composition
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of the work. The circle is fractured along its vertical axis with a shocking strip of red, with Hon
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leaving the white paper unmarked in the center, a central absence. Time Untold reads as a celestial,
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philosophical collision of planets and universes, in which a bodily presence emerges from Hon’s
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cool, abstract circles. Juxtaposed with the earlier air brush work Sulptured Silence (1971)(Plate 5),
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a similar composition which features a three-dimensional orb with a grey gradient splitting open
to reveal a floating, smaller blue sphere, Hon could be said to be peeling back the metallic surfaces
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of his circles to look more inward, towards the body and desire.
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The seventies mark Hon’s inclusion of dark, bleeding chasm-like marks, in stark contrast to the
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sharply masked edges of his split circles. The paintings Black Flame (1970) and E is the Name (1971)
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(Plates 6.1 and 6.2) are most representative of this turn. Both paintings combine deep shades of
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crimson, blood red and magenta with dark, blooming V-shaped stains. In Black Flame , the canvas
is awash with color, the edges of the circle subtly delineated with shadow-like wisps of darker
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paint. The dark mark in the center of the circle bleeds profusely outward, spilling into the red form

14 Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang), “Star Gazer,” in Over and Yonder (Hong Kong: Fung Ping Shan
Museum, The University of Hong Kong, 1988).
15 Interview with Hon Chi-fun, artist, conducted by Shum Long-tin, Hong Kong Art History Research
Project, Asia Art Archive and Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2013.
https://cdn.aaa.org.hk/_source/digital_collection/fedora_extracted/35794.pdf.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

and creating an appearance of a deep recess of chasm. The central split draws viewers inward with
its utter blackness, which sharply contrasts with the overwhelming warm, embodied palette of the
work. E is the Name employs a similar form but with a drastically different compositional style, as

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the red circle with the black chasm is being mirrored and split into concentric vertical strips, giving

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a collage-like impression of the sphere growing larger and more out of focus as it escalates in scale.
Both works conjure yonic imagery in abstract, surprising ways, which transcend the limitations

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of the body and enter a realm of psychedelic, cosmic sexuality. These paintings highlight Hon’s

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framing of sexual desire within broad concerns of existence, by combining his planet imagery

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(which is most often interpreted as a depiction of a person’s lonely soul in the universe) with that
of a vagina, the origins of life.

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In contrast to his warmer-toned works, Hon’s darker chasm paintings such as Wet Enigma

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(1972) (Plate 7) are more representative of his oeuvre, with their somber palette and ambiguous

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approach to imagery. Wet Enigma is awash in navy, with two round forms emerging towards the
brighter left center of the composition. A blurred, horizontal slit cuts across the composition,
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fading and receding into a blue-black shadow which appears in many of his works. While the
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title and out-of-focus marks of the work suggest sensuality and desire, Hon’s choice of colors
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is decidedly somber, more reminiscent of a night sky than a human body. In this way, he could
be said to challenge what we come to expect from images about sex, and how we construe and
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imagine the parameters around the body. The body becomes a galaxy, with sex being mapped as
a process to become one with the universe. In the later painting Here and Beyond , Hon’s chasm
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is rendered even more abstractly, as an orifice between smooth, endless swathes of black and
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green, tinged with bright yellow. The painting features a dynamic interplay between blackness
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and colors, illumination and darkness, painted marks and blurred halos. Hon appears to be
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interested in overlaying sexual motifs with abstract beams of light and halos, suggesting that
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desire and transcendence may be concurrent modes of being for him.

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Depictions of Breasts and the Question of Objectification

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In addition to yonic imagery, a number of Hon’s works from the early 1970s feature a single breast
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as the focal point. Some are depicted in faint shadows and subtle traces, as in the pastel blues
of White Karma (1972), a work rendered completely in airbrush. Other paintings, such as the
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gradient-splattered Known Enigma (1971) and the deep-wine toned Karma Focus (1971)(Plates
8.1 and 8.2), feature more delineated forms, with the nipple and weight of the breast articulated
with layers of color and shadow. At first glance, a contemporary feminist reading may reduce these
works to objectifying fantasies. Indeed, it is worth noting that every member of the Circle Art
Group was a man (except for their secretary, Ching Kit-yu), and that Hon was not the only member
of the collective to depict women’s body parts in their art.

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 Kaitlin Chan

That being said, these works cannot be separated from their context, and as highlighted previously,
there was a culture of sexual liberation spreading worldwide at the time. When presenting the
question of objectification to Choi Yan-chi, she responds with further background. She reiterates

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how these works broke many taboos about what was acceptable or permissible to depict in

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art in Hong Kong. Another point involves how the abstraction of the breast to fill these entire
compositions (all of which measure more than a meter wide and tall) can be read as a state of

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worship, or of celebration: a glorification of women’s bodies as monumental and powerful, on

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the same scale as the planets and floating orbs that populate the rest of Hon’s works. In keeping

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with the heady 1970s atmosphere of re-writing sex without shame and as an ecstatic process, these
paintings may serve as reminders to continually challenge our city’s unwillingness to acknowledge

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or address sex and the body in not only our galleries, but in our society.

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The Rise of Biomorphic Art in Hong Kong
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When considering Hon’s work in relation to representations of the body in Hong Kong Art, one
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must also acknowledge biomorphic art. Coming to prominence in the 1930s and beyond, the term
biomorphic “comes from combining the Greek words ‘bios,’ meaning life, and ‘morphe,’ meaning
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form. Biomorphic forms or images are ones that while abstract nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living
forms such as plants and the human body.”16   The British sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986) was a
ts,

leading figure in this movement, and his landmark 1970 exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of
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Art17   sent ripples through local visual art communities. The exhibition was not only the first large-
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scale sculpture exhibition in the city, but also piqued the interest of Hon and his peers, who sought to
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incorporate abstract meditations of the body into their work. This connection was evident not only
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in Hon’s recollections of meeting Moore,18   but additionally through study trips such as the one Hon’s
peer Ha Bik Chuen(1925-2009) took his students to.19   New Birth II (1992) 20   by fellow Circle Art
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Group member Van Lau (1933–) is one of the representative works of biomorphic art in Hong Kong.
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In this bronze sculpture, Van Lau combined polished and rough strips as a yonic symbol of creation
and new life. Irene Chou, another one of Hon’s contemporaries, transformed the landscape of ink
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painting with her surreal and finely-detailed abstractions of corporeal and reproductive imagery.
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16 “Biomorphic,” Art Terms, Tate, n.d., https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/biomorphic.

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17 Hong Kong Museum of Art. 2012. “50 stories tell the tale of Hong Kong Museum of Art over the past 50
years (with photos)”. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201210/11/P201210110304.htm.
18 Choi Yan- chi, interview by author, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020.
19 Ha took his students to a later exhibition of Moore, also at the HKMA, in 1986. For more information,
see:https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/archive/ha-bik-chuen-archive-1986-my-impression-the-art-of-
henry-moore-in-hong-kong-an-exhibition-of-pupils-pictures.
20 Van Lau, New Birth II , Hong Kong Art Archive, The Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong,
January 18, 2018, https://finearts.hku.hk/hkaa/revamp2011/work.php?id=931.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

While biomorphic art is more closely linked to depictions of cellular/biology related imagery than to
sexual organs, the style relates Hon’s erotic works to contemporaneous trends in re-imagining bodies
in local art circles at the time.

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Some of Hon’s artworks share thematic and visual similarities with biomorphic artworks. Between
Heaven and Dust (1975) utilizes cellular-like imagery that for some may read as a fertilized human

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egg. The silkscreen print depicts a glowing red orb floats in the center of a pink and gray sphere. A

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high-contrast black shadow adds dimension to the red orb, while the sphere is very subtly rendered

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in soft, glowing strokes of pink that give a luminous, glowing effect. The work’s color palette
is undeniably bodily, with tones that harken scientific diagrams of organs and layers of skin.

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Another screen-print, Hon’s Last Paradise (1973), is entirely awash in red and magenta, with subtle

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gradations giving shape to a glowing blood-red circle within a bigger halo shape. While Hon’s

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circular forms can be read in numerous ways, when considered alongside Between Heaven and

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Dust , the deep layers of blood-red in Last Paradise begin to tell a story about an internal passion
flaring up within the body. The works can be configured as abstract, mysterious interpretations of
the bodily processes that create the miracle of life. ese
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Locating the Body and Sex in Contemporary Hong Kong Art

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Since Hon was creating erotically charged airbrush paintings in the 1970s, many socio-
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technological changes have impacted how Hong Kong artists consider sex in art. The
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proliferation and accessibility of audio-visual technologies, the dissolution between bodies and
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machines, and the city’s ascent to Asia’s leading hyper-capitalist free-market economy, have all
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influenced artistic trends. Amidst today’s hyper-connected landscape, Hon’s paintings appear
ever-more corporeal and embodied in their analogue grandeur, their scale evidence of Hon’s
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embodied physicality in the creation process (much has been made of the elaborate structures
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he built to create such large-scale paintings, as airbrushing requires repetitive physical actions
over hours at a time). Nevertheless, one may draw linkages between Hon’s abstracted forms to
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key contemporary artworks which also employ representations of the body as metaphors for
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sexuality. In pioneering new media artist Ellen Pau’s Song of the Goddess (1992), Pau slices
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distorted footage of the beloved Cantonese Opera duo Yam Kim-fai and Pak Suet-sin with footage
of two women bathing together. The bathing footage is filmed with a hand-held camera, in a
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domestic setting with minimal lighting, the image crops tight around their intimate actions. The
juxtaposition of popular Cantonese operas with lovers in the bath surfaces queer subtexts that
position the love between two women not as a spectacle, but simply a reality, as articulated not
only in grand operatic stories but also everyday gestures. In this way, Pau’s work can be said to
continue Hon’s legacy of creating unflinching artworks that do not apologize for, or skirt around,
sex and sexuality. That being said, it is worth noting that Hon’s expression of sexual desire as a
heterosexual man has different social stakes than Pau’s work exploring queer desire between two

236
 Kaitlin Chan

women. The sexual desires and sexual identities of women have long been suppressed in society
and culture by patriarchal notions of women as property/subservient subjects to men.

.
ng
The contemporary research-based artist Angela Su also employs abstractions of the body in her

Ko
reflections on the sexual self in society. Informed by her academic background in biochemistry, her
meticulous and layered visual artworks often depict maligned or transformed versions of genitalia

g
on
and women’s body parts. Her 2014 embroidery work Armillaria mellea , which was commissioned

H
by Para Site for an exhibition which also included works by Hon Chi-fun and Irene Chou, 21   

of
depicts a honey fungus plant combined with an ejaculating phallus, sewn with hair on sheer
fabric reminiscent of the curtains outside Hong Kong’s ubiquitous massage parlors. In addition to

i ty
highlighting the omnipresence of various sex-work related businesses in Hong Kong’s cityscape,

ers
Su’s poetic meditation on sexual pleasure challenges visitor’s discomfort about explicit genitalia

n iv
and body hair. 22   Challenging what is and isn’t labelled obscene, Su’s work asks profound questions

U
about how our bodies are sexualized in contemporary culture. Her depiction of a sewn vagina
in Whip Stitch (2019), from her series titled “Sewing together my split mind,” activates the rich
ese
political history of sewing one’s body as a form of critiquing social norms about whose bodies
hin
deserve care or pleasure. Su’s works illuminate how an awareness of the social conditioning around
eC

women’s bodies has developed since the days of Hon’s burgeoning artistic practice. The subtlety
and layered imagery of her embroidered pieces extend the conversations that Hon and his peers
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were having about how to depict sex amidst Hong Kong’s conservative visual culture.
ts,
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in e

Conclusion: On Respectability, Propriety and Sexual Attitudes in Hong Kong

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of

Given that Hon’s erotic artworks emerged from a specific period of international sexual
liberation, it is crucial to consider how much sexual attitudes in Hong Kong have or have not
t
en

been transformed since Hon’s generation came-of-age. When compiling a book of over ten years
r tm

of research about sexuality in Hong Kong, Professors Ho Sik-ying and Tsang Ka-tat found “a
discursive reality which systemically relegates sexuality to the marginal space of the unspoken,
pa

unnamed and unarticulated.”23   Referring to the ways in which sexual education and surveys were
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clinical and unhelpful, Ho and Tsang were disappointed to discover that the majority of young
020

women they surveyed were un-equipped to discuss or approach sexuality in their own lives. The
understanding of sex as taboo is also mapped onto spatial and economic constraints in the city.
©2

21 “Ten Million Rooms of Yearning: Sex in Hong Kong,” May 10 to Aug 10, 2014, Para Site. https://www.
para-site.art/exhibitions/ten-million-rooms-of-yearning-sex-in-hong-kong/.
22 “Works,” Angela Su, Blindspot Gallery, n.d., https://blindspotgallery.com/artist/angela-su/.
23 Ho Sik-ying and Tsang Ka-tat, “The Things Girls Shouldn’t See: Relocating the Penis in Sex Education
in Hong Kong,” in Gendering Hong Kong eds. Chan Anita Kit-wah, Wong Wai-ling (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004): 690.

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Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

Given the astronomic rise in Hong Kong property prices since the 1980s, it is not a surprise that
young people struggle to find private places to develop their sexuality and sexual relationships. As
the then-twenty-five-year old lawmaker Yau Wai-ching declared in 2016 at a forum at The Hong

.
ng
Kong Polytechnic University, “If we want to look for a room to bang in, we fail.”24   Thus, no matter

Ko
how much values of sexual freedom 25   and expression 26   have strengthened in Hong Kong youth,
the city’s education system and housing market pose major ongoing challenges to people’s sexual

g
on
development and wellbeing. Sexual issues are also not exclusively problematic for young people.

H
As issues of social respectability and propriety continue to hinder everyone from housewives 27   to

of
everyday workers 28   from addressing or managing their sexual problems and insecurities, perhaps
there are still lessons to be learned from Hon’s paintings of genitalia from over half-a-century ago.

i ty
ers
The fact that relatively few Hong Kong artists have taken up sexual desire in their artwork since

n iv
may speak to how much still needs to be changed in our society. The incidents and studies cited

U
above suggest that there are prevailing taboos around the expression and discussion of sexual
desire in contemporary Hong Kong. Even in settings such as sexual education seminars and in
ese
homes between sexual partners, there exists a widely-held set of social beliefs that one’s body
hin
and sexual desires are to be contained or controlled. Hon’s large-scale paintings of body parts
eC

still have the capacity to surprise viewers today. His prints and paintings which revel in the free
expression of carnal desire and his admiration of bodies remain relevant to our current moment.
Th

His work asserts that bodies are not meant to exist as vessels of shame, but as agents of freedom:
freedom to acknowledge and express sexual desires and the full spectrum of human sexuality,
ts,

in art and in life.

Ar
F in e

Editor’s note: Hon Chi-fun passed away on February 24, 2019. He was 96 years old.
t of
en
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24 Her original statements were in Cantonese. Nash Jenkins, “A 25-Year-Old Hong Kong Lawmaker Wants
pa

More Space for Sex” in Time Magazine , October 5, 2016. https://time.com/4519215/yau-wai-ching-bang-

De

hong-kong-sex/.
020

25 Kung Cho-yee, Alan Lee (trans.), “Sexual freedom and why it matters to our youth,” in EJ Insight , February
8, 2018. http://www.ejinsight.com/20180208-sexual-freedom-and-why-it-matters-to-our-youth/.
©2

26 Wong Yuen-kwan, “Young people have more liberal views on sex than a decade ago,” Varsity (The Chinese
University of Hong Kong), January 1997. http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/9701/sexual.htm.
27 “FPAHK Studies found prevalence of sexual problems, low sexual intimacy and coital frequency among
Hong Kong Chinese Women,” Family Planning Association of Hong Kong, September 24, 2014,
https://www.famplan.org.hk/en/media-centre/press-releases/detail/fpahk-studies-found-preva
lence-of-sexual-problems-low-sexual-intimacy-and-coital-frequency-among-hong-kong-chinese-women.
28 Ray Kwong, “Sex experts alarmed over Hong Kong ‘wasteland’,” in EJ Insight , May 23, 2016. http://www.
ejinsight.com/20160323-hongkongers-have-fewer-orgasms-than-everyone-on-the-planet/.

238
 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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圖一之一 圖一之二
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韓志勳《西貢》，木 板本油彩，31 x 41 釐米，藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞 韓志勳《獅子山腳》，1959，木 板本油彩，31 x 41 釐米，

姿提供。 藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。
F in e

Plate 1.1  Plate 1.2

Hon Chi-fun, Sai Kung , oil on board, 31 x 41 cm, collection of the Hon Chi-fun, Lion’s Rock , 1959, oil on board, 31 x 41 cm,
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artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi. collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.
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©2

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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圖二
韓志勳《速餘》，1966，布本油彩及鐵 板，102 x 102. 2 釐米，
藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。

Plate 2
Hon Chi-fun, Speedy Past , 1966, oil on canvas and iron plate,
102 x 102.2 cm, collection of the artist. 
Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

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©2

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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©2

圖三
韓志勳《恆淵》 1971，塑膠彩布本，
整體：188 × 188 × 4.7 釐米，M+，香港。［2017.324］。
© Hon Chi-fun.

Plate 3
Hon Chi-fun. Chasm Forever, 1971, acrylic on canvas,
overall: 188 × 188 × 4.7 cm. M+, Hong Kong. [2017.324].
© Hon Chi-fun.

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©2

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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©2

圖四
韓志勳《火浴》，1968，布本油彩，塑膠彩及絲印，三聯畫，
132.1 x 396.3 釐米。
由香港藝術館收藏 及提供圖片（AC1968.0009）。

Plate 4
Hon Chi-fun, Bath of Fire , 1968,
oil, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, triptych, 132.1 x 396.3 cm.
Collection of and image courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art
(AC1968.0009).

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 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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©2

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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©2

圖五
韓志勳《鑄默》，1971，布本油彩，124 x 123 釐米，
藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。

Plate 5
Hon Chi-fun, Sulptured Silence , 1971, oil on canvas, 124 x 123cm,
collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

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 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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©2

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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©2

圖六之一
韓志勳《黑燄》，1970，布本塑膠彩，132 x 132 釐米，
米蘭Dr. Paolo Marinotti藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。

Plate 6.1
Hon Chi-fun, Black Flame , 1970, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm,
collection of Dr. Paolo Marinotti, Milan.
Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

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 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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©2

圖六之二
韓志勳《人 未》，1971，布本塑膠彩，183 x 183 釐米。
圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。由香港藝術館收藏（AC2006.0011）。

Plate 6.2
Hon Chi-fun, E is the Name , 1971, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 183 cm.
Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi. Collection of Hong Kong Museum
of Art (AC 2006.0011).

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250
©2
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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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圖七
韓志勳《濡偈》，1972，布本塑膠彩，132 x 132 釐米，
由香港藝術館收藏及提供圖片（AC1972.0025）。

Plate 7
Hon Chi-fun, Wet Enigma , 1972, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm.
Collection of and image courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art
(AC1972.0025).

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意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

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圖八 之一
韓志勳《知靈 》，1971，布本塑膠彩，132 x 132 釐米，
藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。

Plate 8.1
Hon Chi-fun, Known Enigma , 1971, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm,
collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

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 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

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©2

圖八 之二
韓志勳《通 靈 》，1971，布本塑膠彩，132 x 132 釐米，
藝術家藏。圖片由蔡 仞姿提供。

Plate 8.2
Hon Chi-fun, Karma Focus , 1971, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm,
collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

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