In response to the question "where is poetry?" an Old Irish text suggests as an answer "i ndorchaidhéta"–literally, in darkness. ¹

The multimedia installation Night: Serenade points to a similar inspiration, a notion of darkness as a paradoxical site of emotional illumination and possible emancipation.

The immersive work offers a poetic and metaphorical journey through the darkness of the night, the effect of which is produced by a wooden ceiling structure covered with indigo-dyed fabric that was strenuously pounded with egg whites over a period of nine months by the Dong women of China. Screened under this artificial darkness is a film based on the artist’s recent poems. The multimedia exhibition attempts to concoct a nocturnal theater that reflects and intensifies the artist’s inner poetic vision and humanitarian concerns. Bewitched into a peculiar night mode, the viewers are prompted to reflect on versions of darkness: the unfathomable darkness of the womb that harbors life and wisdom; the veiled labor of women; those that are hidden, confined, abandoned, aborted, those who have never managed to weather the night and glimpse a beam of light. Yet the night is not entirely terrifying as it also gives birth to poetry, which is hinted at in Han’s anthology of poems, published as part of the exhibition: the nightly presence of the moon suggests a possibility, even if it has never been fully seen.

Following the descending structural flow of the black ceiling, one is to greet the day, where a series of paintings referencing Persian paintings unfolds distinctive yet interrelated narratives: “Set the River Free” honors the inspirational courage of Iranian women in the protests sparked by the brutal death of Mahsa Amini, while “Three Begets All Things” attempts to make the mysterious link between womanhood and nature manifest. The tulip in “The Beloved” represents the symbol of lover in Persian literature, yet the flower turns her back to the viewer, resting on the block-printed floral frame: the artist embraces and rejects tradition simultaneously in order to challenge the structural oppression embedded in artistic forms.

“Moksha” hints at a gateway to emancipation, a hope for an end. These images portraying highly condensed semiotic messages unfold respectively distinctive and interrelated, multilingual and multicultural narratives about women and their suffering across Sufi poetry, Arabic and Persian literature, mysticism, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. Combining the formalism of Persian painting, the Indian woodblock printing technique, as well as the chromatic dualism of Chinese literati painting on the material basis of the Western oil painting, Han Mengyun attempts to reconcile cultural conflicts and overcome geopolitical segregation via formal hybridization.

Night I, Serenade, according to the artist, set out to be an exploration of her innerscape, where a myriad seemingly unrelated things cross and make connections. It is not only multimedia but also multilingual, the visual language transcultural and the suffering of women universal. This multiplicity, seemingly disruptive inconsistency and the dissolution of specific cultural identity, speak for her most truthfully as an artist today.

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^1. “An Old-Irish Tract on the Privileges and Responsibilities of Poets.” Ériu 13 (1942): 38.