Image of Hong Hong standing in her studio. Beverly, MA. 2024. Photo by Mel Taing, courtesy of Boston Art Review.

Artist Talk

August 28, 5:30pm, Auditorium S151

Exhibition Reception and Graduate Open Studios

August 29, 6-8pm, Margie E. West Gallery

The Dodd Galleries at the University of Georgia is pleased to announce Hong Hong: Inland, our 2024 Margie E. West Prize recipient exhibition in which Dodd alumna, Hong Hong MFA '14, examines the body as a closed ecological system, where various materials continually interact to sustain and regenerate itself. The large-scale paintings are made from hand-formed paper imbued with fragments from the natural world and Hong’s personal history - invasive plants or soil collected from Leelanau Clay Cliffs, objects preserved by her late grandfather, water from the Atlantic, images of the moon, poems written by Hong and then translated by her mother. This exhibition considers subjectivity as a remote region, sovereign and far from all borders.

These site-specific works, as well as the on-going interstitial relationship between the land and the artist, time and language, also proffers the body as an expanded field of activity. “I’m interested in a sense of self as a shifting set of external and internal connections, of on-going convergences,” she explains. Moments of clarity often emerge in Hong’s deep interest in narrative and the cumulative nature of story-telling. “Each sheet is a collection of debris, of passing weather, of what is useless, of what everyone loses along the way, of what we forget, of text messages, of a single day, of many days condensed together, of leftovers, of dust, of what I love, of what I hate, of soil, of pollen, of margins.”

Hong will discuss her practice in a public artist talk on August 28 at 5:30 pm in room S151. The following evening, August 29, the Dodd Galleries will host an opening for various exhibitions, including Inland, from 6 - 8 pm. Guests can expect to visit graduate open studios during this celebration, as well.

背面/Backside. 2023. 78 inches (H) x 84 inches. Hand-formed paper made with water from the Atlantic, sun, repurposed paper products, and charcoal. Photo by Julia Featheringill, courtesy of the artist.

Artist Bio and Statement

Each summer and fall, Hong Hong (b. 1989, Hefei, Anhui, China) travels to faraway and distinct locations to make paper. The environmental, site-specific investigations map interstitial relationships between landscape, time, and the body through cartographic, symbolic, and material languages. During the winter and spring, she forms paintings directly on the floor of her studio. These schematics combine intergenerational story-telling, collaborative texts, and image-making to document states of interiority and subjectivity.

Hong is the recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024 - 2026), United States Artists Fellowship in Craft (2023), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in Painting (2023), Carnegie Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell (2020), Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center (2019), Artistic Excellence Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of Arts (2019), and a Creation of New Work Grant from the Edward C. And Ann T. Roberts Foundation (2018 - 2019). She has participated in residencies at Yaddo (2019), McColl Center for Art + Innovation (2022), Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2020 - 2021), and I-Park (2018).

Hong’s projects have been presented in exhibitions at Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA), Ortega Y Gasset Projects (New York, NY), Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME), NXTHVN (New Haven, CT), San Francisco Center for Book Arts (San Francisco, CA), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA), Akron Art Museum (Akron, OH), Texas Asia Society (Houston, TX), and University of Texas at Dallas (Dallas, TX), among others. Her practice received press in publications such as Art21, Art New England, Southwest Contemporary, Hyperallergic, Public Parking, Two Coats of Paint, and Glasstire.

About the Margie E. West Prize

Established in 2020, the Margie E. West Prize recognizes an accomplished artist or scholar who  graduated from the Lamar Dodd School of Art with a solo exhibition in the Margie E. West Gallery. Past recipients of the Margie E West Prize include John Douglas Powers (’08, MFA with distinction) in 2020, Pam Longobardi (’81, BFA) in 2021, and Zipporah Camille Thompson (’15, MFA) in spring of 2023. The Lamar Dodd School of Art is grateful for the support of the West family for our programming and exhibitions in the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery, which is supported by the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery Endowment Fund. 

Margie West served on the boards of The High Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and was a long-time member of The Forward Arts Foundation and a founding member of the Ceramic Circle of Atlanta. Her love of the arts was shared and passed down to her family, as her granddaughters attended Lamar Dodd School of Art. Margie’s contributions to the arts will be part of her lasting legacy. She will always be remembered as a voracious collector with a keen eye and unbridled passion for the arts.