Hung Liu
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
—Lord Byron
I paint from historical photographs. My subjects have been prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, laborers, and prisoners, among others. By washing these subjects in veils of dripping linseed oil, I both preserve and destroy the image. My style has been called a kind of weeping realism that embodies ideas like the erosion of memory and the passage of time. I try to summon the ghosts of history in . . .