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Astra Huimeng Wang

@strictlyfictional

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To fantasize is to create a fortress, one that separates us from the more urgent demands of reality. It is to imagine a possibility in which we might truly thrive, a more inspiring place, a more forgiving time. The West often played the role of a canvas onto which I projected my fantasies, as an avid young reader growing up in Inner Mongolia, learning English largely through the lens of fiction. Revisiting that notion became the starting point for this exhibition.

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Polite Infidelity, my second solo exhibition with Make Room

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Installation photos by Zachary Ruddell by @strictlyfictional

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5 months ago

Thank You for Coming Home

2025
Flock, oil, acrylic, and paste on treated antique piano lid (wood)
58 × 58.5 × 2 in. (147.3 × 148.6 × 5.1 cm)

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Previously on view @makeroom.la as part of the solo exhibition Polite Infidelity by @strictlyfictional

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6 months ago

In the Grand Scheme of Things

2025
Flock and paste on treated antique piano lid (wood)
52 × 56.5 × 2 in. (132.1 × 143.5 × 5.1 cm)

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Previously on view @makeroom.la as part of the solo exhibition Polite Infidelity by @strictlyfictional

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6 months ago

Join me tomorrow at @sohohouse Holloway for a conversation on language, desire, and the collapse of fantasy. I will discuss (with the brilliant @jenniferpiejko ) my exhibition Polite Infidelity, which is currently on view @makeroom.la , and my new short film In Time’s Ruins.

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Sat, Feb 8, 2:00-3:30 PM
Soho House Holloway taken in Holloway House by @strictlyfictional

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2 years ago

My exhibition with @makeroom.la opens tonight. 6–8 PM. It is a particularly special project that a lot people that I have the honor to call friends helped me put together. I’ll share more in the following month, but for now, I, with great pleasure, invite you to join me tonight. taken in Make Room by @strictlyfictional

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2 years ago

Make Room is pleased to share that Astra Huimeng Wang's solo exhibition is now to open on January 25, 2025 with reception from 6-8PM. The artist will be present.

As the programming resumes, we hope the reception offers a space for our larger LA community to come together after this challenging time.
🛑
The exhibition title Polite Infidelity perhaps allures to our mentalities as members of a “post-ideological” society. It may seem unbecoming, even offensive, to commit fully and unironically to a single ideology or belief system. Instead, society unironically commits to the delusion that we are not witnessing the slow collapse of western empires—once powerful but now faltering. So is this what Wang is signaling towards, with the works in Polite Infidelity?

The plush vibrancy of the raw-liver-red flocked curtains in Mildly Entertaining, Keenly Felt, the gilded-age attire of the audience attending the spectacle central to the painting, the conspicuously jaunty attire of the processioners in In Time’s Ruins, and the joyful romp that concludes the funeral parade—These elements seem to offer satire on a silver platter, inviting us to reflect on our disillusionment. However, all of her works, in particular In Time’s Ruins, belie something more sincere and lacking in real “ironical distance.”

@strictlyfictional #AstraHuimengWang by @strictlyfictional

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2 years ago

all is fair in love and tournaments by @strictlyfictional

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3 years ago

An honor to be on the November/December issue of @artillery_mag . Thank you @julesvernova for writing about my work in such a brilliant and tender manner. Grab a copy in a bookstore or newsstand near you (support LA's longest-running contemporary art magazine! Also it’s simply a beautiful issue) or if you can’t, read online for free ♥️ taken in Los Angeles, California by @strictlyfictional

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4 years ago

Beneath a Dreamy Chinese Moon, Where Love is Like a Haunting Tune
2022
Flock, acrylic, paste on birchwood panel
48 x 60 inches (122 x 152 cm)

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“The sense of being watched is most keenly felt in the painting Beneath a Dreamy Chinese Moon, Where Love is Like a Haunting Tune (2022). Here horses are being paraded in a circle; the sense of pageantry and showmanship is cleverly undermined by the ice-blue flocking that creates a chilling effect and casts a ghostly mood. All we see are the horses and riders’ amorphous silhouettes as they melt into the valley landscape. While the show goes on, the aubergine sky looms and draws the eye to a second, truer splendor—nature’s. The patch of yellow and tiny green clouds lend their own lighting effects toward a different focal point. Rather than stage footlights, our eye is drawn to an aurora borealis that calls our gaze out beyond the constructed reality. Where a stage curtain might hang, we instead see a sprawling spider web. The flocking here blurs the delineation between web and spider body, of spectator and spectacle.”

𝘿𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙪𝙢 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘿𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙮 — 𝙒𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘼𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖 𝙃𝙪𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙜 𝙒𝙖𝙣𝙜 𝙒𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙔𝙤𝙪 by Julie Schulte @julesvernova for Artillery Magazine @artillery_mag

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@makeroom.la by @strictlyfictional

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3 years ago

𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙍𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙖𝙣 𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝘽𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙃𝙚 𝙃𝙖𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙖 𝙎𝙝𝙪𝙩 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝘽𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙡𝙚. 𝙄𝙩 𝙒𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙢 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮. 𝙃𝙚 𝙒𝙖𝙨 𝘾𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙩, 𝘽𝙪𝙩 𝘼𝙨 𝙎𝙤𝙤𝙣 𝘼𝙨 𝙃𝙚 𝘾𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙈𝙖𝙙 𝙃𝙚 𝘽𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙎𝙩𝙪𝙥𝙞𝙙

2022
Flock, acrylic, acrylic medium on birchwood panel
48 x 60 inches

Currently on view at @makeroom.la

Photos of work by ofstudio. Installation photos by Christopher Wormald. taken in Make Room by @strictlyfictional

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4 years ago

Today is the last day to see And the Moon Be Still as Bright at @harpersbooks
512 + 534 West 22nd Street, New York

With much gratitude to @harpersbooks @thehereandthereco @civilart.nyc @srahaha

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𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘢𝘸𝘯
2023
Flock on panel
48 x 36 inches
⚡️ by @strictlyfictional

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3 years ago

Opening tonight in Hong Kong! This new painting is included in Lost in Translation at @galeriedumonde curated by dear @_anqili . The exhibition is on view through April 23 🏜

Sirens’ Call
2023
Acrylic and medium on birchwood panel
48 x 60 inches / 122 x 152.5 cm taken in Galerie du Monde by @strictlyfictional

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4 years ago