69” x 39”, oil on canvas

Collection of Museum London

The rigours of dissent discarded without shame, like a

fan.

Outside the implements of war creak and clatter.

Countries are passed like pots across a table

that groans with plates of hummingbird tongue.

Day and night, heaven and earth are split.

But in this rushing stream, I hear a turning wheel.

The letters are slanted, in homage to Su Shi’s slanting characters. This world is rarely without war. The borders are always being redrawn. The last line, to mind, is miserably hopeful: the great wheel turns and all things will change. The painting was shown in To Dissent, the 2021 exhibition Olivia Mossuto curated for Embassy Cultural House as democracy in Hong Kong withered. Its goal was “to reflect on Hong Kong, to consider its past, present and future” though its immediate future was “foreseen” as each artist realized. Some lines from Su Shi framed the exhibition: Bearing no grudge,/Why does the moon tend to be full when people are apart?