Title: Cold Memory

Artist: Ma Ao

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Artwork Size: 30 × 40 cm（11.8'' × 15.7''）

Framed Size: 50 × 60 cm（19.7'' × 23.6''）

Year: 2026

Frame: Black wood-grain solid wood frame with white mat

Artwork ID: MBA-2025-037

Authenticity: Original · One of a Kind · Signed Certificate of Authenticity

Artwork Description:

Cold Memory unfolds in a dreamlike green atmosphere, creating a visual space that feels suspended between physical sensation and psychological symbolism. At the center of the composition is a gourd-shaped form that reads both as a vessel and as an object charged with ritual meaning. Inside it, a dark, curling shape appears almost alive—suggesting concealment, growth, entanglement, and quiet unease.

Rather than illustrating the literal experience of “having a cold,” Ma Ao transforms that familiar bodily discomfort into a more poetic and psychological image. Through color, abstraction, and symbolic form, the painting evokes the blurred, feverish, slightly distorted state that often accompanies illness. The dominant green palette recalls herbs, humidity, inner bodily reactions, and a space suspended between healing and strangeness.

The calligraphic, talisman-like marks on both sides of the composition deepen the work’s mysterious narrative quality, making the painting feel less like a depiction of sickness and more like a private record of sensation, emotion, and subconscious memory. Experimental in its visual language yet quietly rooted in an Eastern symbolic sensibility, this work is especially suited to interiors that value individuality, atmosphere, and contemplative presence.