Collection Details

Name/TitleI <3 Syd

About this objectArtist statement
''My painting explores exaggerated and self-conceptualised self-portraiture in a way that considers arranging the self, objects and landscapes in a way that is carnivalesque.

'The idea of the carnival liberates individuals from the constraints of everyday life, allowing for a fluid exchange of identities and roles. This idea resonates deeply with the diasporic experience, where identity is often fragmented and multifaceted.

'I am interested in the way that patterns travel across time and space and have spiritual meaning or idiosyncratic ones. Scattered in my work are patterns from Han Dynasty tombstones, the Sydney skyline, and imagery from Chinese mythology.'

Jacquie Meng (b.1998, Hangzhou) works with painting, sound, and installation. Her work redefines diasporic cultural identity beyond national and geographical specificities, rather seeing it as unfixed. Through consideration of post-humanism, performativity, and the migration of objects and imagery between cultures, Meng explores the ways that identity can be reflected beyond the body: it can be revealed through objects, patterns, chance encounters, idiosyncrasies, as well as through embedded cultural and social practices. She makes paintings of her surroundings through a speculative lens, collapsing time and space, changing the experience of observation into one of invention, referencing mythologies and personal truths and fictions. Through this, She highlights the uncanniness of the everyday and reflects on the strangeness of identity politics.

MakerMeng, Jacquie

Maker RoleArtist

Date Made2024

Medium and MaterialsOil paint on canvas

Place MadeWaverley, NSW

TechniquePainted

MeasurementsImage: 780 h x 780 w mm

Subject and Association KeywordsPainting

Subject and Association DescriptionThe artwork was highly commended in the 2025 Blacktown City Art Prize.

Named CollectionBlacktown City Art Collection

Credit Line© Jacqui Meng
Acquired 2025 Blacktown City Art Prize exhibition
Blacktown City Art Collection
Photo: silversalt Photography

Object TypePainting

Object numberBCC MEG 001