Twelve years after Alisan Fine Arts debuted the landmark exhibition Beyond the Jade Terrace (2014), which heralded a new vanguard in contemporary ink with female artists Chu Chu, Wang Mengsha, and Zhang Yirong — we now reconvene at Alisan Atelier with Revisiting the Jade Terrace, where we are honoured to present the established pillars of the same artists who now stand as major figures in contemporary ink art, joined by Zhang Ying.
Over the past decade, each artist has reached significant milestones. Chu Chu, a multimedia artist, has developed a distinct visual language that seamlessly integrates photography with calligraphy; her work is held in collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou. Wang Mengsha has emerged as a standout talent with a deeply personal yet widely celebrated aesthetic. Zhang Yirong immerses herself in meticulous gongbi painting, revitalizing Chinese aesthetics, with works in Brooklyn Museum, MFA Houston, and LACMA. Zhang Ying is drawn to the spiritual dimensions of traditional Chinese landscape painting through evocative depictions of landscapes, rocks, and trees.
Presented as part of the gallery's year-long 45th-anniversary programme, Then and Now, the exhibition forms the "Now" component of a dialogue between generations. First emerging in 6th-century literature, the Jade Terrace has carried the expressions of women across centuries; today it has transformed from a space of constraint into a generative lens on Chinese culture, art, and female artists. Artist Talk: Saturday, 5 September 2026, 3–4 PM — "Female Voices in China Now" with Wang Mengsha and Zhang Yirong.
Alisan Fine Arts