A Bridge Between Two Worlds. A Bridge Across Time.

Contemporary traditional Chinese painter and ceramic artist Weilun Ha has one of those creative minds that take leaps to make conceptual and practical connections most of us would never dream of. As an artist, he “appreciates tradition but also destroys it.” [1] Fuelled by a combination of boundless curiosity and a flint like lightness of being, Wei has built his award-winning art practice around his innate gift to not only take leaps and make connections, but also his ability to hold seemingly opposites together with a delicate, graceful touch. The result is an exquisite body of work that effortlessly combines centuries old traditional Chinese painting techniques with contemporary discourse and universal human concerns of identity, fragility, and the eternal quest for oneness. 

Born in Vietnam in 1987 – the year of the Fire Rabbit (which possibly goes some way to illuminating where Ha’s effervescent, personable, and indomitable energy comes from) Wei immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand as a young boy. His family settled in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, where he completed his education, including his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Auckland. After graduating, Wei was a lecturer in Architecture at Otago Polyethnic, painting and entering art competitions on the side. It wasn’t until his 2016 painting Breathtakingly Fragile won the Wallace Arts Trust Vermont award that same year that he leaned completely into being a full-time artist. 

Breathtakingly Fragile is a delicate, beautifully rendered traditional Chinese blue ink and resin painting on fabric which depicts an almost perfectly anatomically accurate pair of human lungs. These lungs, however, are not filled with oxygen alone. Contained within the lobes, the trachea, and each connecting bronchi, is an exquisitely articulated hybrid landscape and series of repeating patterns. It is a visual expression of what it is to inhale the air of Aotearoa, to have it pass into your bloodstream, sustaining you in the here and now, while simultaneously drawing you back to your family and ancestors hundreds of kilometers away. It is a piece that speaks not only of Wei’s heritage and identity, but to each of our own layered histories and hybrid identities.  

Painting and art making, as both an act and a career, have enabled Wei to connect to his Chinese heritage, shape his identity, and solidify what he stands for. Identity is a complex and layered thing for most of us; even more so for those of us who, like many in Aotearoa, come from multicultural backgrounds. To have one foot over here, the other stretched out and pointed over there, can often feel a little unstable. The question of who we are, and the quest to trace our roots back to their origin point so that we may stand strong and proud with a sense of balance in the present, is arguably one that can only be addressed through the creation of, or an engagement with art. The artist certainly believes this, and considers his artwork to function not simply as a thing of aesthetic beauty, but as a cross cultural communication tool. Through the use of universally recognisable patterns and human structures: the heart, the lungs, the hands; waves, flowers and mountainous landscapes, he speaks to us in a language we all understand. Every single person who walks this earth can surely recognise, and appreciate, the symbolic meanings embedded within each representational or abstract element the artist weaves into the narrative composition of his paintings. While we may come to observe the work from distinctly different backgrounds, and varying degrees of a priori knowledge, we nevertheless respond intuitively. Each work speaks not only of the artists identity, but of our own individual life force, and that of the person who may be standing next to us. 

Through his use of universally recognisable patterns and human structures: the heart, the lungs, the hands; waves, flowers and mountainous landscapes, Wei speaks a language we all understand.

Winning the Vermont award was, in many respects a catalyst for Wei. Not only did it give him the confidence to pursue his art career, it also took him to New York – one of the largest and most diverse urban melting pots of culture on earth. During the six-month long residency in 2017, Wei visited over 300 art galleries and museums – an impressive feat in and of itself. It was as if he was determined to inhale and absorb into his being every artist and every artwork, from every art historical period. Upon his return to Aotearoa, Wei “felt like (he) had opened up.” This extended period in the USA, soaking up the godfathers and godmothers of contemporary art, and making connections with fellow artists from around the world, solidified his resolve and commitment to exploring how to use his artwork as a cross-cultural bridge. The intent and motivation within the work shifted from being primarily an expression of his personal identity, to the development of a bi-lingual visual lexicon. This unique, distinctly Weilun Ha visual lexicon and style enables the artist to share the rich culture and beauty of traditional Chinese art with a New Zealand audience in a relatable contemporary way. 

For Wei, the contemporary lens he applies is not derived from a desire to remix traditional techniques, or to invent a novel use for traditional materials. He is not interested in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Which is why you would be forgiven for seeing only the traditional aspects of his work at first glance. Rather, the contemporary finds expression through the conceptual and cultural leaps and connections the artist makes before he sits down to paint. Within each different painting series, and even more so in the porcelain object pieces, and the public art piece he was commissioned to create for the Commercial Bay Airbridge in celebration of The Year of the Rabbit, Wei builds a multidimensional, multi-cultural world of beauty. To achieve this he has developed a unique bi-lingual visual lexicon which function as the building blocks of his overall visual language. The lexicon is based upon his reinterpretation of traditional Chinese patterns and motifs, combined with Western art movement such as geometric abstraction, recognisably Aotearoa landscapes, and the previously mentioned human structures. When each seemingly disparate, yet exquisitely rendered, individual element comes together on the artists chosen surface, the result is a composition that doesn't simply speak; it sings.

Upon his return to Aotearoa, after the six months he spent in Vermont and New York in 2017, Wei “felt like (he) had opened up”

What binds these complex compositions and the lyrical narrative contained within — and more importantly, what prevents them from becoming indecipherable or incoherent — is Wei’s technical mastery of, and rigorous adherence to, traditional Chinese techniques and materials. Without this grounding (which he was first drawn to as a young boy as a way to understand and define his identity and establish what he stood for) reinterpretation would be impossible. There is a valuable life lesson in this approach, applicable beyond the practice of art: before you can break away and forge your own path, you must master the fundamentals. You must be in possession not only of technical ability, but also a deep knowledge of the essence of ‘the thing’ you wish to break away from. It, whatever ‘it’ is, must run through your veins, through every pore. You must live and breathe it consciously and subconsciously. Only then can you know who you are, how you got to this point, and begin to imagine where you might go next.

This philosophy is one that Wei strives to impart to the young art students he now teaches. Grounding them in both technique and art history in order to push them forward, he encourages them to use technique as an inroad for exploring their own stories. He also prepares them to fail; to see beauty in imperfection. And, perhaps the most important lesson of all: that it is not possible to control everything — no matter how much of a technical master you may be. Indeed, it is often through the relinquishment of control, and the embrace of the unexpected that breakthroughs transpire. This was certainly the case for award-winning abstract painter Luise Fong. It was a “happy accident” in the studio one day in the early 2000’s that served as the genesis of a recurring, intentional, and distinctly recognisable stylistic ‘tear drop’ device. As Fong recalls, she put a large dollop of paint on to the surface of a new piece she had just started working on. For whatever reason — perhaps to make space on her bench for other materials, she stood the piece up, leaning it against the wall. What happened next was a battle between the pull of gravity and the buoyancy of the viscous pigment and oil suspension. The large dollop began to creep downward. Ever so slowly, the dollop morphed into an elegant, tactile droplet shape. What began as nothing, and what could have been interpreted by another as a disaster, was seen as entirely the opposite. Fong chose not to see this as a failure, but as a new direction full of exciting potential. [2]

While Wei’s traditional, highly detailed, and representational art practice couldn’t be further from Fong’s intuitive abstraction, it is their philosophical approach, combined with their technical mastery and thorough understanding of the history of their chosen mode of expression that links these two artists.[3] Each artist in their own way creates works of universally understood aesthetic beauty. It is a beauty that arises not from perfection, but from the visual harmony of recurring (yet never repetitious) patterns; from a composition which is perfectly imperfectly balanced. Brought together, these elements express our interconnectedness. This aspect of Wei’s philosophical approach to life and art is also very much aligned with the Japanese practice of Kintsugi. A centuries old traditional practice, Kintsugi is the art of mending cracks in ceramic objects with gold. Unlike in the west, where every attempt is made to camouflage a repair job and make it appear ‘as good as new’, Kintsugi transforms damage into a thing of beauty. The imperfections are adorned with precious gold; what was broken is reconnected, becoming greater than the sum of its parts. 

This is what Weilun Ha gives us through his art. Not only objects of beauty, each piece a small part of a larger cross-cultural bridge. He offers us a potential structure for living that embraces the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, and the realisation that "we are all riding a wave… we are part of a universal human story.” In finding a way to articulate his own identity through tradition, breaking tradition apart, distilling it through his incisive and curious mind to put it all back together in an entirely new way, Wei shows us that we are, individually and collectively, greater than the sum of our parts. 

"We are all riding a wave… we are part of a universal human story.” We are, individually and collectively, greater than the sum of our parts. 

Footnotes

[1] Weilun Ha discussed his art practice and shared insights into his approach to life with Jessica Agoston Cleary on 24 January 2023. This quote, and others throughout the text (unless otherwise noted) are from that interview.

[2] When asked about the origin or inspiration of the droplet motif, during a studio visit in 2022, Luise Fong shared this story with the author. The embrace of chance and the unexpected is a not uncommon element in abstract painting. Without this distinctly Eastern philosophical ethos the Western art cannon would certainly be without some of its greatest works. While the scope if this piece of text does not allow for further expansion of this notion, I will mention notable Aotearoa New Zealand American artist Max Gimblett. Gimblett has forged his very successful international career on his ability to fuse abstract expressionism with Japanese Zen philosophy.

[3] In a beautiful example of fate and the interconnectedness of all things, after reading the first draft of this essay, Wei shared with the author that Luise Fong was the artist he chose to study for his year 13 art classes:“You knowit’samazing how fate binds people together. Louise was one of my artist models… In year 13everyone has art boards to produce for NCEA that replicate their heroes in art with their style [combined] with the student’s own work. I did heaps of cells floating around a heart..Ialsohanged areal-lifeLouiseFong during my days working as a volunteer at AntonetteGodkin gallery.”As the author I can truthfully say that I had no knowledge of the connection between these two artists, nor Wei’s appreciation for Luise’s work prior to writing.