Wang Mansheng: Without Us
A Landscape in Motion
The delicate silk panels—painted in traditional ink and black walnut ink—depict intricate scenes of trees, rocks, water, and other natural elements, some inspired by The Huntington’s Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance. Suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, the translucent panels invite visitors to animate the installation as they walk around and become part of the landscape.
“The installation is composed of independent elements that, when placed together, form a unified whole—just as nature and all living beings are interconnected,” said Phillip E. Bloom, the curator of the exhibition, the June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden, and the director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies.
Wang Mansheng working on Without Us. Image courtesy of the artist. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Detail of Without Us. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. Image courtesy of the artist. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Detail of Without Us. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. Image courtesy of the artist. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Detail of Without Us. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. Image courtesy of the artist. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Detail of Without Us. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. Image courtesy of the artist. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Wang Mansheng working on Without Us. Image courtesy of the artist. | © 2024 Wang Mansheng. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
The Art of the Natural World
The panels—arranged in singles, diptychs, triptychs, and a quadtych—serve as reflections of the natural world itself.
“I chose narrow, tall panels for mountain peaks and broader sets for a lotus pond or an expanse of woods and hills,” said Wang Mansheng, the 2025 Cheng Family Foundation Visiting Artist in the Chinese Garden. In homage to the silkworms that produced the panels’ silk, Wang depicted a mulberry tree with silkworms feeding on the tree’s leaves, their primary source of nourishment.
Throughout the gallery, visitors will encounter excerpts from classical Chinese literature, featuring the writings of scholars, poets, and philosophers, including Confucius 孔子 (551–479 BCE), Zhuangzi 莊子 (4th century BCE), and Laozi 老子 (6th century BCE). Many of the passages refer to the ancient Chinese concept of guan 觀—to observe and appreciate nature by emptying the mind and allowing the natural world to enter. The excerpts on the gallery walls are reproduced from Wang’s own calligraphy.
The exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on themselves, their environment, and their place within that environment. “What would the world be like without humans? What has the world become with humans? These are questions I asked when creating this work,” Wang said.
An audio guide narrated by Wang and a digital brochure featuring his notes on creating the panels will offer insight into his artistic process and inspirations, deepening visitors’ understanding of Without Us. Both the audio guide and digital brochure will be available in English and Mandarin.
Wang Mansheng. | © 2018 Wang Mansheng. Image courtesy of the artist. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
About the Artist
Wang Mansheng (born 1962, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China) is a renowned New York–based artist whose work merges traditional Chinese painting with contemporary art. He often crafts his own tools and materials—including reed brushes and ink made from black walnuts—to add texture and depth to his pieces. His artistry is showcased throughout The Huntington’s Chinese Garden. He created the designs for the two carved pictorial tiles on either side of the entrance to the Studio for Lodging the Mind. On a nearby rock, a striking blue inscription that reads “Garden of the Arts (藝苑 Yi Yuan)” highlights his distinctive calligraphy.
