m.a.g.

LET GIRLS BE WICKED: KATINKA HUANG’S EMOTIONAL PLAYGROUND FOR ALL THINGS FEMININE

Words: Laura de Remedios for Fantú magazine

What do girls do when left alone? Looking into the paintings of the past centuries for answers, it seems like not much. We read, we painted landscapes, we gazed into oblivion in a hopeless – albeit still seductive – manner, we picked ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ petals from flowers… It’s not up until recently that women have defied these male-gaze-infused stereotypes in the art world. Katinka Huang’s work, in particular, brilliantly humanises women in the most absurdist of ways.

The Shanghai-born, New York-based artist traces her interest in the portrayals of femininity back to her Shanghai years. While only a child, little did this young observer know she was witnessing what would become the theme of her greatest works. “Ideologies of femininity in the East and the West are so different. What Chinese people consider feminine and beautiful and ladylike is very different to what the West considers beautiful and feminine – less so on beauty and more on femininity.” Huang tells FANTÚ MAGAZINE. Leaving Shanghai at age eleven for London, she recalls the mental impact this shift had on her, as she explains to me “At an age where you’re so easily malleable, I was sort of confused about how I should act, I want to be accepted into this new culture that is so different to what I was used to and what I was taught”.

Starting a new life in an all-girls boarding school in London, the desperation to fit in coupled with a chronic fixation on her female peers’ behaviour led to a whole lot of reflections she shared with me: “I was surrounded by so many women, and it really got me thinking ‘how should I act?’, and I became so hyper-observant to other girls’ behaviour because I wanted to mirror them, I wanted to fit in. That really confused my psyche”. There was one specific reflection of Huang’s that stood out to me, and having also gone to an all-girls boarding school in the UK, I had an intuition of where she was getting at. Perhaps inconspicuously, the beauty of an all-girls school is that free from the burden of self-awareness or attracting boys, girls can fully develop all aspects of their personalities—the weird, the bad, and the ugly included. Resonant with my own experience, there was never a need for boys in my school years, not because ‘girls can do it all!’ and ‘we don’t need no man!’, but because enough of the antics and mischief usually associated with boys were already contained within these girls. Likewise, enough of the rage, grotesqueness, and absurdity usually associated with men, are already contained within women, and Huang knows this very well.

So, what better style to convey this rage, grotesqueness, and absurdity than surrealism? Honing her painting skills in Paris, she solidified her style early on. Her Bacon-esque distorted, dreamlike representation of female figures contrasting with the soft, ethereal colors highlight the internal struggles Huang might face each step of the way.

Take I’m a Nice Girl If You Give Me a Chance, with the two faces: one serene and the other more intense, symbolising the conflict between an individual’s true identity and the facade they present to the world. Inner turmoil is an overarching theme, shown in Strong Enough to Cleanse Your Palette, depicting a face in apparent agony or ecstasy, surrounded by splashes of intense color and dynamic brushwork, suggesting a profound emotional experience, seemingly caught between suffering and liberation. However there is a moment of vindication, in Pros and Pros, the two nude figures are standing side by side, their forms rendered with a soft, diffused technique that blurs the boundaries between them: the figures, almost merging, hint at an eventual reconcile between our two selves.

The idea of reconciliation is not an afterthought, but the raison d’être of Huang’s paintings, as they serve as her escape from the how-should-I questions she keeps asking herself. At one point in the interview, she made the remark “I once saw this dog smell their bum on the street and asked myself, ‘What if it was a woman doing that’?”. Indeed the what-ifs surrounding female transgressions are the catalysts for Huang’s artwork. Her moments of dissociation in her daily life become her inspiration when it’s time to hit the canvas. In her paintings, she can be everything she can’t necessarily be in real life: “I can be crude, I can be childlike, I can be random, I can throw tantrums with floods of tears”. In this manner, Huang transforms moments of introspection and dissociation into the fuel sustaining the surrealist voyage her paintings create.

So what do girls do when left alone? We might not be smelling our bums, but we are definitely searching within.

Katinka has exhibited in numerous group shows both nationally and internationally, including Salon Beyond Lobotomy, in Paris (2019), General Expenses, in Mexico City (2022), Lux Feminae in Long Island City, NY (2022), Echo Box and After Eden at LatchKey Gallery in NY (2023), Earthquake Relief Benefit Auction at Ethan Cohen Gallery in NY (2023), Really From at NYC Culture Club, NY (2023), Genesis at Chambers Fine Art in upstate NY (2023), A Happy Beginning at Latitude Gallery in NY (2023), Heart of a Tiger, a benefit for Planned Parenthood in NY ( 2023), Lo Que Tú Ves, Galeria Leyendecker, in Tenerife (2023), Allegory of Redemption at Galeria Caylus (2024),  Katinka Participated in the Spring Break Art Fair (2023) and Arco Madrid (2024). In 2019 Katinka was invited to create a mural by Chelsfield Ltd, for a retail location on Rue Marbeuf, Paris.  Katinka grew up in London, England, where she attended Central Saint Martin and studied graphic design. She later moved to Paris and earned her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at Paris College of Art. Most recently she has attained her Master’s of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York. 

FANTÚ MAGAZINE