ABERDEEN.- 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 the gallery 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.

Over the past decade, each artist reached significant milestones in their careers. Chu Chu, a multimedia artist, has developed a distinct visual language that seamlessly integrates photography with calligraphy. Wang Mengsha has emerged as a standout talent, her artistic style has evolved into a deeply personal yet widely celebrated aesthetic. Meanwhile, Zhang Yirong immerses herself in meticulous gongbi painting, revitalizing the essence of Chinese aesthetics, where she is drawn to the spiritual dimensions of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Zhang Ying is drawn to the spiritual dimensions of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Over the past ten years, she has been dedicated to 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, highlighting the vitality of contemporary ink practice while reflecting on the traditions from which it emerged. In parallel, the "Then" chapter unfolds at our Central gallery, bringing together four influential figures associated with the New Literati Movement—Chen Jialing, Jiang Baolin, Lu Fusheng, and Peng Xiancheng. Together, the two exhibitions consider how Chinese ink painting continues to evolve across generations, responding to changing social, cultural, and artistic landscapes.

Since its founding in 1981, Alisan Fine Arts has been committed to championing artists who expand and redefine the possibilities of Chinese art. Throughout the gallery's history, women artists have played an important role in this story, contributing perspectives that have enriched and transformed the field. Today, as contemporary ink painting continues to embrace new forms of expression, female artists occupy an increasingly prominent position within its development.





First emerging in 6th-century literature, the Jade Terrace has carried the expressions of women across centuries. The scholar-poet Xu Ling named his classic love poetry anthology New Songs from a Jade Terrace after the lavish chambers where upper-class women spent their lives in isolation. Over time, the Jade Terrace has transcended those physical walls to become a poetic sanctuary—an ideal space where women unite in aesthetic expression. Today, it has transformed from a space of constraint into a generative lens on Chinese culture, art, and female artists. This exhibition traces the gallery's history, celebrating how artists continue to redefine space, tradition, and expression.

Born between the 1960s and 1980s, Chu Chu, Wang Mengsha, Zhang Ying, and Zhang Yirong represent distinct female voices shaped by different experiences, concerns, and approaches to the medium. While their practices vary widely—from experimental combinations of photography and calligraphy to reimagined figure painting, contemplative landscapes, and meticulous gongbi compositions—they share a commitment to extending the expressive potential of ink beyond convention.

Chu Chu
b. 1975 Hangzhou, China

Chu Chu is a renowned cross-disciplinary artist working in photography, calligraphy and painting, inspired by Chinese philosophy and classical literature. She is currently the Vice Secretary of the Lanting Calligraphy Society and the Vice President of the Zhejiang Female Calligraphers Association in Hangzhou. She graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 2000, where she also received her MFA in New Media in 2007, and in 2015 obtained her PhD in calligraphy under the tutelage of Wang Dongling. She has been devoted to ink painting and seeks to incorporate traditional with modern media, merging photography and calligraphy.

She has received numerous awards since she graduated, including the Shiseido Prize for Best Female Photographer; the New Media Art Contest Award (2004) and Creative Award of New Media (2006) from China Academy of Art; video awards for What I Said is Nonexistent (2004) and Trace (2005); the Three Shadows Photography Award, Beijing (2011); Yearly Cutting-edge Photographer, Beijing (2010); Excellent Works Awards at the New Century Oil Painting Exhibition (2001), and Zhao Mengfu Prize National Painting Competition (2000).

Chu's work has been exhibited widely in France, Germany, England, USA, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. Key exhibitions include Metamorphosis: Chinese Imagination and Transformation at China Institute Gallery, New York (2026); Word Play at Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2024); Summoning Memories at Asia Society Texas, Houston (2023); Out of the Shadows at Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego (2020); Writing Non-writing at China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2015); Paris Photo at the Louvre, Paris (2014); and Jetlag: New Media Exhibition in Hanover, Germany (2012).

Her works have been acquired by major museums including Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Smith College Museum of Art, Massachusetts; Northampton; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger, Norway; Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China.

Wang Mengsha
b. 1982 Wuxi, Jiangsu, China

Wang Mengsha was born to an artistic family in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. She studied animation at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Art. She later completed advanced studies at Griffith University, in Queensland Australia, and the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom before returning to China as a full time artist. She currently lives and works in Beijing and Wuxi.

Her art style blends her animation training with a deep interest in traditional Chinese painting and culture. Her unique xieyi-style works adopt a sense of humor, innovatively combining court maiden and landscape motifs. Like her fellow townsman Walasse Ting, she is associated with bright colors and calligraphic strokes, yet as a female artist, she applies a feminine perspective to examine the past and future, redefining contemporary ink art within history and modern culture.

Wang has received numerous awards, including being named one of "China's Young Artists Most Deserving of Immediate Media Attention" by Chinese Painting (2009); her work was selected among "The 100 Most Favourite Artworks of the Year" by Bazaar Art (2011); she received the "Golden Star Prize" from National Arts (2013); and the "Academic and Artistic Achievement Award" from Beijing Business Today and the Beijing Association of Auctioneers (2024).

Wang has had three solo exhibitions with Alisan Fine Arts: two in Hong Kong in 2016 and 2024, and another in 2025 in New York, USA, marking Wang Mengsha's debut solo exhibition in New York. Group shows include the HOPE charity exhibition, Hong Kong, 2018; Themes and Variations, New York, 2024. In 2023, the images of Wang’s colourful works were seen travelling from Sheung Wan to North Point on Hong Kong’s iconic tram to promote Ink Asia, a fair dedicated to promoting ink art. Two catalogues have been published for the artist.

She has exhibited at the University of Edinburgh Library, UK; Galerie 99, Germany; China Cultural Centre, Tokyo, Japan; International Art Centre, Jeju, South Korea; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; College of Fine Art Nanjing Art Institute, Nanjing, China. Her work is currently on display at The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Zhang Ying
b. 1969 Suzhou, China

Zhang Ying is a graduate of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where she completed both her undergraduate (1995) and postgraduate studies (2003). Though formally trained in ink figure painting, her practice has long been drawn to the philosophical resonances of the classical landscape tradition, and for the past decade, her work has dwelled almost exclusively in the quiet grandeur of mountains, rocks, and trees.

In the hands of the old masters, landscape was never mere scenery; it was a vessel for the vastness of the cosmos. Following this lineage, Zhang sees in a single pine or solitary stone not a fragment of nature, but nature's entire expanse, a world unto itself where generations of artists have sought both solace and revelation. She inherits this timeless language, yet speaks it in her own accents, distilling ancestral echoes into a visual syntax that feels at once ancient and intimately her own. Her paintings are spaces of suspended time, thresholds between the pulse of the present and the silence of the spirit. Each brushstroke invites a slow looking, a quiet breath. To stand before her work is to enter a contemplative clearing, where the viewer, too, becomes part of the landscape's unfolding meditation.

In 2017, Zhang Ying held a solo exhibition Folded Scenery and participated in the group exhibition Self-Selected Compilation, both in Beijing. Recently, she also exhibited in the Contemporary Craft-Art-Design Exhibition in Hangzhou in 2023.

In 2021, POP ROCK marked Alisan Fine Arts' first collaboration with the artist and the debut exhibition of her works in Hong Kong. Following this event, her artworks were showcased in the gallery's group exhibitions around the world, namely Beyond Tradition: The Metamorphosis of Chinese Art in London in 2023, Themes and Variations in New York in 2024, and Tradition Transformed in Hong Kong in 2025.

Her works are in the collections of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China; Morgan Stanley Bank Asia, Hong Kong.

Zhang Yirong
b. 1979, Shaanxi, China

Zhang Yirong is a contemporary woman ink painter, best known for her quietly sophisticated butterfly and flower paintings. Zhang first received her training in classical Chinese ink painting at a young age from her father, Zhang Xiubiao. In 2001 she obtained her BA from the Communication University of China, Beijing and earned an MA from Peking University in 2008. Upon graduation, she practiced ink painting and has since created meticulous works that display her ability to capture painted subjects in exquisite and analytical detail.

Her art, which often features a feminine sensitivity and natural style, draws from a wide range of classical influences and inspirations from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, particularly the Song Dynasty artistic tradition of direct observation. Zhang’s elegantly wrought compositions avoid hackneyed themes and instead focus on an organic source of perfected beauty.

In 2017, Zhang has held solo exhibitions in Moscow and Suzhou, titled Ink Painting by Zhang Yirong and Buddha and Flower respectively. She has also participated in group exhibitions at prestigious institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York Historical Society, New York Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden, Florida Harn Museum of Art, Tsinghua University's Museum of Architecture, and Art Museum of Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Alisan Fine Arts has exhibited Zhang's paintings in various group exhibitions, including a joint exhibition with Tai Xiangzhou titled One with the Universe in 2017; Contemporary Chinese Art in London in 2022; Ink Alchemy in Hong Kong in 2023; and Themes and Variations in New York in 2024.

Zhang's exceptional artworks are in major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Harn Museum of Art, Florida.