Howie Tsui’s Horror Fables explores different ‘heads’ of fear through a grotesque series of depictions of Chinese and Japanese ghost stories.

During an artist talk he gave at the exhibit’s opening reception on Tuesday, Oct. 13, Tsui explained that he has long been fascinated by how fantasy can be simultaneously absurd and violent, comic and graphic, creative and terrifying.

For the Hong Kong born, Ottawa-based artist, this show is a nostalgic return both to the imaginary worlds, into which he could escape as a child and to the horrifying stories through which his mother endeavoured to shape his character.

“A lot of fear was instilled by my mother. She told me: Every grain of rice you leave in your bowl is the number of warts your future wife will have,” Tsui explained.

The show is delivered in two parts. The first is a series of large scale yet intricately detailed sketches on mulberry paper that mimic ancient Asian scrolls.

The imagery and scenery are taken from ghost stories Tsui learned from the media and from family members, but also includes characters he invents himself. Much of the background, including temples, carp, and shadow puppets, draws from Tsui’s Asian heritage.

“I jumbled various references together with my own unconsciously produced characters with the hope that viewers will construct their own ghost stories,” he explained.

The scrolls teem with content that could keep the viewer busy for hours on end – two-headed children, a gangly frog navigating a canoe, a woman sentenced to live with hands of a dead woman hanging from her breasts, and a bird-man perched atop a mountain with talons and feathery eyebrows. His characters are equal parts cute and cuddly, and equal parts grotesque, graphic, bloody or obscene.

The second component of the exhibit is an installation that alludes to Japanese Kabuki theatre.  Half of the gallery walls are covered in smudged and bloody images of skulls and monsters with devil wings.

Matches are used to highlight these apparitions. The sulfur stains a yellowish colour and the smoke leaves ghostly tendrils which emanate from the images, creating a dizzying sensation of falling and depth.

Tsui came up with this clever idea while working on the aforementioned scrolls. After pulling down some of his pieces from the walls, it seemed as if the paint had seeped through the paper and left a residue. Shapes and faces began to pop out of the abstract forms, with the paper ‘corpses’ lying nearby.

“Process-wise, it’s a metaphor for the afterlife, where the discarded rice paper resembles a lifeless corpse, and the spirit of the painting is transferred onto the gallery walls.”

This exhibit is well worth seeing, but if you tend to get scared, be sure to bring a friend.

Published in Volume 64, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 22, 2009)