SHEN Jiawei | Figures in History · Figures Here and Now

SHEN Jiawei is obsessed with history books and has self-promoted as an artist specialising in representing history through his paintings. Nonetheless, after decades of drawing and painting, he looks back and realises that the history in his work consists of nothing more than people – a collage of historical figures. He is, after all, a portrait painter.

Jiawei migrated to Australia as a middle-aged man. Penniless, he survived on his professional training through sketching portraits on the street. Decades has passed and the content of his portfolio has developed from tourists to a prime minister, a governor general, a cardinal, a princess and two popes, and he has become a publicly acknowledged master portrait painter. Time flies, his subjects have been ingested into history: the prime minister elected and rejected, the princess now a queen. Jiawei finally understands that he is indeed an artist specialising in history.

And what’s more, he has painted himself into the history.  

Do you agree with Jiawei that you and he, and all of us are part of history? We are the onlookers of history; but we are also its hostages. In the grand cosmos, our global village is a small dot, and we are merely the dust. But back in our world, every lively face represents a unique cosmos. This is what gives significance and satisfaction to Jiawei, a portrait painter specialising in history, and to you.