Roselina Hung
Home: Vancouver, British Columbia
Title: Lady in Braids
Media: Oil on wood panel
Dimensions: 51 x 41 cm
Website: roselinahung.com
Instagram: @roselinahung
ARTIST STATEMENT
Lady in Braids is a self-portrait from an ongoing series spanning nearly twenty years. As I have aged, I have become increasingly drawn to my hair as part of my visual identity and as a material through which to consider time, change, and the self. Here, I wear a dress I made while weaving a form from my own long braid. The hair holds the physical evidence of years of growth, while braiding and weaving transform that accumulated time into something made by hand.
I first encountered this form as a childhood craft made with sticks and yarn. After taking time away from my art practice to raise my daughter, I was reminded of it when she made the same craft. A childhood memory returned through her, connecting us across generations. Only later did I discover its cultural and spiritual histories and its connection with the Mexican Ojo de Dios, or God’s Eye.
The woven form resembles both an eye and a ship’s wheel: a symbol of seeing and navigating. Through the acts of making and painting, the work considers labour, the traditions we inherit and pass on, and the experience of aging and becoming. The braid becomes both a record of time and an act of continuity.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Roselina Hung is a visual artist based in Vancouver, BC. She holds an MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London, and a BFA from the University of British Columbia. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed media, her practice explores personal experience, cultural memory, and the histories embedded in everyday materials and forms.
After taking several years away from her art practice to raise her daughter, Hung has returned to making with a renewed interest in craft, handwork, and materials associated with women’s labour. Her current work explores motherhood, aging, inheritance, and identity through acts of making passed between generations.