Fishing Handbag

Huang Hongtao was born in 1983 in Heilongjiang and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Harbin Normal University. Huang paints landscape of Northeastern China, most of which he titles Nameless Mountain. For him Nameless Mountain symbolises both a specific site and the traditional Chinese cultural belief system that he is firmly rooted from. The unpolluted, pure scenery is interpreted and expressed by the artist with strong, primary colours such as black, blue and red. Fishing Handbag is a playful composition that reflects on the relationship between culture and consumerism. The artist invites viewers to ponder whether materialism and luxury, embodied by a handbag, or one’s cultural identity that is manifested in the Nameless Mountain is worthy of viewers’ attention and consumption.