Karla Wong’s Folkloric Portraits Conjure Mysterious Portals to Another World
Mexican-Chinese trans artist Karla Wong exhibits a body of oil paintings at Chicago’s Intuit Art Museum that synthesizes her Oaxacan heritage, forensic sketch background, and personal identity. The works deploy skeletal figures referencing Día de Muertos iconography, folk alebrijes sculptures, and desert botanicals alongside Victorian dress and gender performance motifs. Wong’s practice draws inspiration from surrealism and the uncanny, incorporating mysterious cloud formations and dimensional portals evoking alchemical precedents in Remedios Varo’s portraiture. Unlike her prior forensic work constrained by descriptive accuracy, these vivid canvases deliberately disrupt scale, pair disparate objects, and construct an autonomous imaginary world. The exhibition runs through January 10 at Intuit Art Museum in Chicago.
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