A Tale of Ancestral Memories
A Tale of Ancestral Memories is a visual odyssey. Commissioned by Art Production Fund in 2023 for the Rockefeller Center (view here), this is Dominique Fung’s most ambitious work to date. 88 feet (26 meters) long, it is composed of 7 parts (30 canvases), revealed for the very first time in its intended form at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
A Tale of Ancestral Memories is the culmination of her ongoing exploration of identity, memory, ancestry, the female body, the passage of time and the fusion of Eastern and Western art historical references. Playing with the canon of the traditional ancient scroll, gradually revealing itself to its reader, she begins her tale in the water, at night, with the Ama or Haenyeo sea women, taking us across sea, boat and land, to finally reach a foreign destination inhabited by surrealist horses with a wheeled chariot, in perpetual movement.
2024 - Unlimited | Art Basel
DOMINIQUE FUNG
A Tale of Ancestral Memories, 2023
Oil on canvas
109 x 2686.4 cm / 43 x 1057.5 inches / 3.5 x 88 feet
30 panels
A Tale of Ancestral Memories, installation view, Unlimited | Art Basel. Photo by Andrea Rossetti
A Tale of Ancestral Memories, installation view, Unlimited | Art Basel. Photo by Andrea Rossetti
The Artist
Dominique Fung (born 1987, works in New York) is a Canadian artist with ancestry in Hong Kong and Shanghai, whose practice explores the subliminal liminal territory in which tradition, memory and legacy seep through our collective subconsciousness. Through her interest in casting light on overlooked or forgotten stories and her use of specific historical artifacts she infuses with living qualities and complex non-linear narrative paths, she models a new, broader, alternative space of belonging.