Marian Ang: Female Migration, Memory and Belonging

Description

Contemporary visual artist Marian Ang interweaves dislocated objects — antique jewel boxes, faded souvenirs, lunar calendars, worn baby shoes — with stories of women and motherhood across Chinese diaspora migrations over a century. She rethreads these fragments into quests for luck and belonging, where time fractures cultural returns.

Among the highlights include the 2025 painting series, All About My Grandmother, which traces a 100-year journey from modern China via Hong Kong and then-Malaya to contemporary Singapore, blurring faces while sharpening outlines. Elsewhere, figurative cabinets of curiosities “Anatomies of Luck” curates charms and totems in suspended wood frames. Paintings and mixed media works like “Home Sweet Home” and “Somebody Told Me” merge personal histories with folkloric whispers.

Born in London and based in Hong Kong, Ang is a Courtauld Institute art history graduate and former UNESCO heritage consultant in the field of cultural heritage protection, specifically the trafficking of art and antiquities. Inspired by her father’s vast collection, Ang’s works honour the memories and emotions of the mundane and everyday, bringing a new perspective to the genres of still life and the domestic. They can be found in private collections in Hong Kong, Australia and the United Kingdom.