Dominique Fung: A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center

August 7 – November 17, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Installation View

A Tale of Ancestral Memories

Rockefeller Center, New York, 2023

Press Release

Dominique Fung is a second-generation Chinese-Canadian artist whose practice explores the 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.

 

As a focal point of her Art in Focus commission for Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center, Dominique Fung imagined an all-encompassing yet open-ended epic odyssey. Located at the concourse of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, traditionally painted scrolls unfold to tell a story otherwise ungraspable as a whole. Spanning 125ft in length and created in the studio as a single multi-panel painting at ⅔ scale, the scene creates a connection between the palpable physical place in which it lives and the ethereal subconscious plane it unfolds for its viewer. Instilled with life, artifacts from the Shang and Tang Dynasties meet Ama women and quaint fishing figures in abstracted landscapes of seashell flowers, tree corals, and wide-casting nets.

 

The vitrine spaces at 45 Rockefeller Plaza showcase three sculptural installations. Interwoven within the artworks are recurring motifs of floraand persistent thematic elements central to Fung's artistic explorations. These elements collectively narrate a tale of voyaging through uncharted territories, from the depths of an ocean dark as the night, through troubled waters washing softly onto the shores of a land of infinite possibilities.

 

Expanding from the vitrines, a curated selection of recent paintings by the artist can be viewed at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, and Radio Park. As part of Art Production Fund's Art Sundae program, which aims to build confidence in children through art, the artist will also host a free workshop, collaborating with participants to create an installation to be presented at the 10 Rockefeller Plaza window.

Dominique Fung (b. 1987, Ottawa, Canada) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BAA from Sheridan College Institute of Technology in Toronto, Canada. Recent exhibitions include MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, Nicodim in collaboration with the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Objects for Comfort in the Afterlife, Pond Society, Shanghai (2022, solo); Crossing, Kotaro Nukaga, Roppongi (2022); In Bloom, Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique, Paris (2022); Wonder Women, curated by Kathy Huang, Jeffrey Deitch, New York and Los Angeles (2022); Luncheon on the Grass, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2022); Coastal Navigation, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022, solo); Women of Now: Dialogues of Identity, Memory and Place, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas (2022); Dominique Fung and Katherina Olschbaur: My Kingdom and a Horse, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2021, two-artist); It’s Not Polite to Stare, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2021; solo); PAPA RAGAZZE!, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020); Relics and Remains, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020, solo); Friends and Friends of Friends: Artistic Communities in the Age of Social Media, Schlossmuseum, Linz (2020); TRANS WORLD, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim Los Angeles and Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2019); Wash Your Corners, Ross + Kramer, New York (2019, solo); and Looking Backward, Moving Forward, Taymour Grahne, London (2019, solo).