In Chicago, Intuit Art Museum is presenting Journeys of Being, a vivid survey of paintings by Karla Wong that threads together her Oaxacan roots, Chinese heritage, and experiences as a trans woman moving between the U.S. and Mexico. The Mexican artist brings a background in forensic drawing to canvases that revel in symbolism, saturated color, and shifting scales.
From forensic memory to folkloric myth
Though long devoted to drawing, Wong’s degree in law ultimately set her on an unexpected creative path. In Oaxaca, where she spent her adolescent and early adult years and attended university, she worked as a forensic and witness sketch artist for the local justice department. Translating verbal accounts into likenesses honed a fiercely imaginative muscle—one that continues to shape her approach to painting.
In Journeys of Being, skeletal figures suggestive of Day of the Dead commingle with the folk art bestiary of alebrijes and expanses of desert punctuated by agave. Victorian dress and elaborately made-up faces underscore the performed nature of gender and the visual languages we use to communicate beauty and self-expression.
Surreal thresholds and selected works
Surrealism and the uncanny pulse through Wong’s compositions: clustered clouds and small apertures function like thresholds to elsewhere. The works play with proportion and unusual juxtapositions, and, unlike the lifelike renderings of her sketch-artist years, they dispense with any fixed script to imagine autonomous worlds. Paintings like Our Brief Passage Through Life (Nuestro breve paso por la vida) share an affinity with the alchemical works of Spanish artist Remedios Varo, who depicted more-than-human figures with odd proportions.
- The Catrina Comes to Chicago (La catrina llega Chicago) (2026), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
- The Chineses from Laollaga, Oaxaca (Las chinas de Laollaga) (2024), oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
- Arriving to the Land of the Mezcal (Llegando a la tierra del mezcal) (2026), oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
- You Born to be Free (Naciste para ser libre) (2026), oil on canvas, 60 x 36 inches
- Our Brief Passage Through Life (Nuestro breve paso por la vida) (2026), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
- The Secret (El secreto) (2026), oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
Journeys of Being is currently on view at Intuit Art Museum and runs through January 10.
