Jade Ching-Yuk Ng weaves personal experience and symbolic imagery into her art, creating evocative works that explore intimacy, loneliness, and transformation. The artist reflects on the relationship between herself and others and is captivated by the tension between constant connection and separation, with her work highlighting the loneliness and emptiness that exist within these interactions. Working across diverse mediums, Ng pushes painting beyond its conventional boundaries, treating her pieces as “body puzzles” that investigate the dualities of existence. Drawing on references such as classical myth, alchemy, anatomy, and religious rituals, Ng deconstructs these sources into poetic, dreamlike fictions. The artist moves away from grand narratives to focus on deeply autobiographical explorations of existence. Through mismatched objects and subtle transformations, she delves into the duality of body and soul, creating ethereal scenarios that reflect the multifaceted nature of selfhood.

Ng perceives Surrealism as “an approach rather than a movement”, a process that consists of “depicting the core of everyday subjects/objects with an interference of distortion and illusion”, with an obvious emphasis on the concept of symbolism. In ‘Eggnog’, Ng reimagines the titular drink through layered visual metaphors: a glass simultaneously containing and spilling, translucent and ambiguous, becomes a portal to a dreamscape. An egg mirrors the glow of a sunset, and a drink becomes a sea; swirling patterns evoke milk and cream, while two figures find themselves reunited in sweetness and fluidity. Ng’s work resonates with surrealism’s ability to reframe reality, inviting viewers to linger in its mysteries and contradictions.

Jade Ching-Yuk Ng (b. 1992, Hong Kong) obtained her BA at Slade School of Fine Art in 2016 and MA at Royal College of Art in 2018. She is a recipient of the Cass Art Painting Prize in 2016 and the Travers Smith Art Award in 2018. She was awarded the Abbey Major Painting Scholarship by the British School at Rome in 2018. Ng worked at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2014. Her work has exhibited internationally, such as Nassima Landau Art Foundation (Tel Aviv, Israel), K11 Musea (Hong Kong, China), Tang Contemporary Art (Beijing; Hong Kong, China), Arusha Gallery (London; Edinburgh, UK), Siegfried Contemporary (London, UK), Assembly Point (London,UK), Horse Hospital (London, UK), Accademia di Romania a Roma (Rome, Italy).