Established after the outbreak of the worldwide pandemic two years ago, the annual Art Prize encourages artists to pay attention to those affected and society as a whole.
Fangmin’s work consists of 20 portraits, including celebrities, politicians, family members and friends, also some strangers.
He hopes to express people’s fear, worry, tension, depression and anxiety through his subjects wearing different colours and shapes of masks to express their personality and mood during the pandemic.
“Human beings face the pandemic situation as a whole, without nationality, ethnic or class,” he said.
“Masks can’t block people’s eyes, just as the pandemic can’t erase people’s souls.”
Moving to Australia in the 1990s, Fangmin studied at the Sydney National School of Art and the Academy of Fine Arts.
Since 1997, he has held solo exhibitions, with his works selected into exhibitions here and internationally many times.
He won the high judge award in Bayside Art Prize in 2018; first prize in the Liverpool Art Exhibition in 2020; and recently his new work ‘Riverside Morning Light’ won the Werriwa Art Prize.
For more info, visit immunisationcoalition.org.au.