Guest Artist: Long YuJun, Tokyo University of the Arts
Long YuJun, Elegance under Pressure, 2025
Long YuJun was born in Chongqing, China and currently resides in Ibaraki, Japan:
“My work explores gender and sexual diversity through a deeply personal and emotional lens. Rather than relying solely on visual representation, I focus on a multidimensional use of materials and techniques.By building trust with my models through dialogue, I capture emotional depth in photographs that become the foundation for subjective reinterpretation in painting.Recently, I’ve incorporated gold leaf and glitter pens to enhance texture and form, creating a dimensional effect that interacts with lighting and evokes a physical and emotional response.
I often depict faceless female figures to question fixed identity and challenge traditional gender binaries and the male gaze. Through this layered approach, I seek to express a universal inner self that transcends gender and individuality.”
Elegance under Pressure – A Metaphor of Woman as an Emotional Vessel
W1940 x H1303mm
Oil on canvas, Gold leaf, glitter pen 2025
I didn’t paint her face or her eyes—because I don’t want to define her. This isn’t a portrait; it’s a moment where she’s quietly being consumed by emotion while still holding herself together. Her jaw, neck, and lips—those often overlooked, silent parts— feel more honest to me than any direct gaze. I’ve always resisted the idea of portraying women fully, front-on, as simply “beautiful,” because that kind of image pretends to say everything while only saying one thing. I’m not here to show beauty—I want to feel what she’s living through. Her fatigue, restraint, strength, and fragility all surface through the heat of her skin and the layered textures of paint. I made her clothing thick and heavy, like emotional armor—a shell that society asks her to wear. The metallics, deep blues, and purples carry the weight of the unspoken. I chose to depict only a part of her, not because it’s incomplete, but because a fragment can speak more truth than the whole. It’s a way of seeing, and also a reflection of myself as the one who sees. Maybe this is what it means for me to draw as a transgender artist—not to define women, but to draw with them, tracing something that still fights to stay alive.
Long YuJun, Devouring Love, 2025
Devouring Love
W1000 x H650mm
Oil on canvas, Gold leaf, glitter pen 2025
In creating this painting, I wanted to capture the extreme state of emotion, even its destructive torment. I intentionally covered the girl's face with intense red, symbolizing the intertwining of love and violence. Her face is abstracted, distorted, representing the burn of emotion that gradually consumes her sense of self, leaving her unrecognizable. I didn't focus on her beautiful features, because in this piece, beauty no longer matters. The red's engulfing presence is not just a distortion of her appearance but a symbol of her inner collapse. Love here transforms into a violent force, tearing through tenderness, bringing both agony and destruction.
The background of bright greens and blues feels dreamlike, yet adds to the sense of emptiness and turmoil within the figure. The entire composition seems to collapse, with the broken edges conveying an irreversible emotional fracture. This painting is a deep exploration of love's complexity and violence, portraying the irreversible scars left by emotional overload.