In "I Tangled Your Legs in Mine. We Were a Knot in the Grain of the World", a seemingly straightforward pencil drawing from 2019 that introduces Faye Wei Wei’s debut monograph Portals, two figures appear entwined, their limbs and long hair cocooned together as the world outside is obscured.
“The book is not chronological, it flows through a feeling of undulating lulls and waves. One of the first pages has a painting I made when I was 16, and we liked the idea of sunsets closing the book. I was on a boat in Greece last year and the sun was like an egg yolk dipping into the sea, my best friend and I both got out our pastels. So it has this quiet beginning, then these intense paintings, and ends with softness, like an orchestra. I think materiality is really important too, and I wanted the book to show how intertwined drawing and painting are to me – they’re not differentiated by hierarchy, they’re both as important and as potent as each other.
“I called the book Portals because I often think about paintings as portals; when you’re making them, they reveal an inner world, and I think of painting as trying to push through into this other portal with your paintbrush. You can’t actually inhabit that space, but you can create it. A lot of people say it, but I do think painting is this infinite thing. It’s really alive, almost with its own skin, and you’re just trying to reach that somehow. I often paint portraits of people I love, which become part of this world I’m building. When I miss a friend I send them a painting or drawing, it’s as if a part of them is always in it. It feels really precious, like treasure, because painting isn’t just an image-making thing, it’s about imbuing something with a presence, reaching into another world.”
— Faye Wei Wei
