Xiong Yu’s new exhibition Tarot will open at Chinablue Gallery on the 10th of October. It takes the 22 tarot cards of the Major Arcana (the trump cards) as its theme and is the product of almost three years work. Xiong Yu has used the theme of tarot cards to portray an external image of his own inner world, his vision of life and the world.

Legend has it that tarot cards originate from the Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, which was used as a divination and decision-making tool by the Pharaohs. The book was later sacrificed to prevent its contents falling into enemy hands, transposed onto a set of pictorial cards, which subsequently made their way to Europe to evolve into the divination cards we know today. Alongside astrology and numerology, they have become one of the pillars of occult science. Tarot cards’ fully integrated system relies upon 78 basic human characters, each with their respective dichotomies, to encompass unlimited possibilities of the world. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung viewed tarot cards as symbolic archetypes, which he used as important indicators in working with patients.

This series of works sees Xiong Yu’s classic figures, with their emerald eyes and long feathery wings, represent man’s potential freedom. He has done away with the heavy ornamentation from before, bringing out purity in the work and giving a sense of weightlessness to the paintings – something that has allowed Xiong Yu to highlight directly his inner world’s activity. Xiong Yu’s goal with each card isn’t to explain its meaning but rather to embody his own worldview. With each card comes different understandings and experience. The first tarot card The Fool, for example, traditionally features a rising sun over a steep cliff. Dangling one foot over the cliff edge is a figure playing the joker, sporting a broad smile as he does so. This card is used as a metaphor for someone who doesn’t realise the precarious situation they are actually facing. However, Xiong Yu’s interpretation of this card has done away with the cliff entirely. It features a figure flying down against a backdrop of blue sky and white clouds, with seemingly no danger or threat in sight. Traditional impressions of a fool were perhaps centred on the idea of someone who was either rather stupid or losing their mind but Xiong Yu’s definition of a fool is clearly not so narrow. When everyone’s roles and positions are so different, something that might seem stupid for one person could seem quite sensible for another. Thus Xiong Yu attempts to reinterpret ancient thought with contemporary semantics, exhibiting a mind-set representative of his own surroundings.