Shown at the first Diriyah Biennale in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in late 2021, The Pavilion of Three Mirrors reflects a unique feature of this exhibition -- the conversation between China and Islam, one of the focuses of my persistent exploration of transcultural dialogues in art. This new body of work is inspired by the famous story of the "Competition Between Two Painters" told in Khamsa by the 12th-century Persian poet Niẓāmī Ganjavi.

The story goes that Alexander the Great, hearing that both the Romans and the Chinese were famous for their painting, wanted to see who was the best in the world. He summoned a Roman and a Chinese painter, who were then told to paint on two opposing walls in the king's hall. A curtain in the middle of the room prevented the two painters from seeing each other while working. At the end of the competition, Alexander lowered the curtain and was surprised to see two identical paintings. The Roman painter’s work was splendid in its incredible realism and deceptively lifelike quality. However, the Chinese painter did not paint but had polished the entire wall into a mirror within which anything in the world could be reflected, including the Roman painting across the hall.

The installation is an abstract and poetic representation of the story as it enacts a site of cultural memory: the audience traverses the mirror vaults as if going between reality and illusion, history and mythology, while the paintings unfold like a manuscript, chapter by chapter, page by page, interweaving motifs, iconography and literary tropes across various ancient cultures.