Inside the Fantastical World of Mimi Mage
Artist Statement
Mimi conjures the fantastical that inhabit the space between the familiar and the uncanny. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, and furniture design, her practice explores the titillating relationship between comfort and discomfort, the grotesque and the delicate, and function and fantasy. Through making, she transforms recognizable forms into vessels for the imagined, where the everyday becomes strange and the inanimate seems almost alive.
Much of her work employs biomorphic and exaggerated forms rendered in a palette of bold, clashing colours, giving her creations a peculiar presence. These forms are a disturbing alchemy of the grotesque and the delicate, infused with surrealism, mythic figuration, and a whimsical sense of humour. The result is a paradoxical creepy-cute sensibility where the unsettling feels intimately familiar.
Mimi sees art as a way to reimagine the things we think we know, from the human figure to the objects that inhabit our everyday surroundings. By subverting these familiar forms, she aims to create estranged reflections of ourselves and our environments. Her work does not alarm so much as it disquiets, to reveal not foreign monsters, but estranged versions of ourselves, asking what haunts the edges of our own reflection.
Biography
Mimi is a Chinese American artist, writer and arts educator based in Hong Kong. She graduated from Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, where she was recognized as a Dean’s List Academic Achievement Award recipient, a Cornell Club Hong Kong Scholar, and a Golden Key Honour Society Scholar. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including Through the Key Hole at the Bibliowicz Gallery (New York), The Chair Monologues at the Experimental Gallery (New York). She currently works in arts sponsorship at a global museum of contemporary visual culture, where she focuses on fundraising to further the institution's curatorial vision. She has also worked in arts education facilitating public engagement, and her critical essays and fiction have been featured in publications such as M+ Magazine and Ming Pao 明報. She is currently conducting research and developing new work around the intersection of domesticity and the surreal, exploring themes of narrative, the uncanny, and the absurd.
Publications
2025 “Coming of Age” Anthology Hong Kong Writer’s Circle
2024 《艾未未與罐子》 明報
“Ai Weiwei and Urns” Ming Pao Newspaper
2024 “The Display of Decay: Gu Dexin’s Chair and the Challenge of Uncollectible Art” M+ Magazine
2024 《化腐朽為共生：顧德新的椅子》 明報
“Symbiosis of Decay: Gu Dexin’s Chairs” Ming Pao Newspaper
Exhibitions
2023 Through the Key Hole. Bibliowicz Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2023 Guild of Visual Arts: Spring Gallery. Williard Straight Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2023 Design Connect: Upgrading the Town of Geneva’s Transfer Station. Sibley Hall, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2023 Art Crawl: Golden Hour. 228 Wait Ave. Ithaca, New York.
2023 Confusion on the Land. Experimental Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2022 Liquidation Sale. Olive Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2022 Cornell Art Mentorship Program: Cornell Autumn Art Show. Olive Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2022 The Chair Monologues. Experimental Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2022 Maven Art House: Summer of ’69. Ithaca Farmer’s Market. Ithaca, New York.
2022 Anthropu$$yne. Experimental Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2022 Certainties in an Uncertain World. Experimental Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York.
2020 Book Keeping: Artists’ Books. Olive Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University. Ithaca, New York