Wesley Tongson’s solo exhibition Singing and Dancing with Brush and Ink: The Art of Wesley Tongson at Asia Society Hong Kong is featured in "Celebrating Wesley Tongson’s artwork in Hong Kong, from disciplined to raw and visceral" by Chloe Loung in South China Morning Post.
More than a decade after his death, Hong Kong artist Wesley Tongson is being celebrated with a comprehensive survey of his experimental ink paintings at the Asia Society.
Titled Singing and Dancing with Brush and Ink: The Art of Wesley Tongson, it marks the first major exhibition of his work at a leading local institution since the early 2010s.
With nearly 30 works on loan from major Hong Kong museums, including M+ and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, as well as private collections and the Wesley Tongson Charitable Trust, the exhibition’s five sections explore Tongson’s distinctive style as it evolved alongside – and was shaped by – deeply personal conflicts and reflections.
His work is intensely intimate, reflecting his struggles with schizophrenia, his deep spirituality – he practised Zen Buddhism but was also influenced by Christianity and Taoism – and a fluid gender identity, says Cynthia Tongson, the late artist’s sister and director of the Wesley Tongson Charitable Trust.
“He painted for himself. He’s all for himself, and that’s why all the work is not about any statement or anything. It’s his own expression,” she says.
“His painting comes from the middle voice, a spiritual void. He always wanted to transcend himself from within to a higher level of consciousness.”
Text courtesy of South China Morning Post.
Images: Wesley Tongson, Singing and Dancing with Brush and Ink: The Art of Wesley Tongson, Asia Society Hong Kong, 2026 (installation view). Photography by Felix Wong.
Learn more --
https://asiasociety.org/hong-kong/exhibitions/singing-and-dancing-brush-and-ink-art-wesley-tongson
