This blue-toned painting is one of the key works in Li Hei Di’s solo exhibition Oscillating Womb. The composition unfolds like a body of water veiled in mist: layers of blue seep and ripple across the canvas, evoking both the undulation of waves and the shifting glimmer of night. Flickers of light and pulses of color drift over the surface, while touches of orange and red—like faint flames—pierce the serenity of blue.
Within this ethereal field of color, ghostlike traces of the human form begin to emerge: blurred curves of a torso, translucent limbs, figures seemingly submerged yet revealed by light. The viewer must gaze intently to discern these fragments of flesh. They hover between apparition and sensation, drawing the gaze into a play between looking and imagining.
Part of the work’s inspiration comes from Tsui Hark’s 1993 film Green Snake, which reinterprets an ancient legend through the eyes of the “green snake,” endowing the character with fluidity, contradiction, and ambiguity. Li translates this notion of an “unfixed existence” from literature and cinema into painterly form: her figures float and waver within the blue haze, never completed nor enclosed, but perpetually in a state of becoming.
Thus, the painting exemplifies Li’s ongoing exploration of “the concealment of the body within abstraction.” Rather than depicting desire directly, she uses layered brushwork and luminous stains to shape the body as a floating possibility. “The figures are ghostlike, semi-transparent presences rather than solid corporeal beings.” This “unfinished figuration” keeps the viewer suspended in a state of delay and reverie, mirroring the very fluidity and elusiveness of desire itself. The dominance of blue intensifies the mood—serene yet oppressive, profound yet charged with an unspoken sense of seduction.