Fei Wu
愛的光輝 “The radiance of love”
Fei Wu 吴菲 is Xiang Li's daughter, the host of the Feisworld podcast, and the reason most of the other people in this room were painted at all — she is the one who met them, interviewed them, and told her mother about them.
This is the color portrait. There is a black-and-white one too.
The only sitter Xiang has known since before she could talk. Everything in the painting is something Fei actually owns or loves — the dogs, the bear, the unicorn — which is what makes it read less like a portrait than an inventory of a life.
Go and find them
This page is about the painting. Their own work is better.
What is in this painting
Xiang Li builds a portrait out of creatures. Each one is a claim about the person sitting among them.
-
1 The title
Down the left edge: the radiance of love.
-
2 The long inscription
Under it, a second column — 菲的世界大愛無疆, Fei's world, love without borders — which is the podcast's name written into the painting.
-
3 The halo
A gold-and-green nimbus of the kind Xiang spent thirty-seven years repainting behind bodhisattvas in the Forbidden City, put behind her own daughter.
-
4 The pink unicorn
Not a mythological beast. A stuffed one, painted with the seams showing.
-
5 The bear
Held in the other arm, as heavy as it would really be.
-
6 The husky
With a rose in its mouth.
-
7 The little white dog
Grinning at the bottom of the silk, with a songbird standing on its head.
-
8 The apple
Bottom right, beside the basket of roses.
