Susie Wong produced numerous portraits in the 1990s, through which she grappled with questions of how women would depict women. The sitters for her works were her friends, making the process an intimate and one of self-discovery for both artist and subject, leading one critic to describe these paintings as “autobiographical narrations of being Woman”. In Seok Tin, Wong has painted the artist Chng Seok Tin who would often visit the artist at her home. Wong upturned conventions of portraiture by obscuring her subjects either by painting out facial features or directing their gaze into the middle distance or averted from the viewer. As her portraits evolve, her subjects appear increasingly obscured from our view, creating psychological depth and emotional distance between subject and viewer.
