Fay Ku has developed a reputation for the wit and rigour of her portrayal of children and adolescents in situations that emphasize the sheer strangeness of human beings. Her works constitute 'an intensely female world whose idiosyncratic habits do not lack for aggression' as art critic Jonathan Goodman calls it.

Straight after her success in Art Asia Miami last year, Fay Ku's Hong Kong debut will take us to a world where nothing seems right. Working on her preferred medium paper, which Ku believes is the most intimate, Ku has created images that are mostly narrative, yet they yield multiple readings, references and associations. To this end, Ku finds relevance in the term 'the unthought known' in psychoanalysis. 'Whore of Babylon' (2013) depicts the evil in the Book of Revelation trying to read and manipulate human mind with its seven-headed beast which has taken on a more Asian and humanized outlook. 'Line Drive' (a common term in American football) (2012) refers to aggression but is here instead a literal description of what the characters are doing: sitting in a line, a single row, with the idea of movement (driving) inferred. Ku's characters explore the fluidity of identity - sexual, cultural, personal and political -and the ambiguity in relationships with one another.

Fay Ku was born in Taiwan and immigrated to USA when she was a child. She lives and works in New York. She got a M.S. in Art History and M.F.A. in Studio Art in Pratt Institute, USA. Exhibitions of her works have taken place in a lot of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Honolulu, London, Paris and Taipei. Her works can be found in the collection of Asian American Art Centre, New York; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; The Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Jersey City, NJ; The University of New Mexico Art Museum. Fay Ku is the recipient of awards/grants from National Performance Network (NPN)/Visual Arts Network (VAN) Project Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts (Deutsche Bank Fellow), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, National Performance Network (NPN)/Visual Arts Network (VAN) Pilot Project Grant and Urban Artists Initiative/NYC Project Grant.

Hootenanny is originally an Appalachian colloquialism meaning a big party, a rowdy, raucous gathering. It's a rather an old-fashioned term, used by the folk music scene in America in the 30s (like Pete Seger, Joan Baez, etc).

Image: © Fay Ku, Karin Weber Gallery