Wang Mansheng: Without Us
A Landscape in Motion
In Without Us, Wang Mansheng, the 2025 Cheng Family Foundation Visiting Artist in the Chinese Garden, has depicted intricate scenes of plants, rocks, and water on delicate silk panels. Suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, the panels create a three-dimensional painted landscape through which visitors can wander.
During their journey, viewers can gaze through the translucent silk to see the shadowy forms of other visitors entwined with the mountains and streams. Humans and nature become connected, even as they remain separate.
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
Throughout the panels, Wang has depicted water, a resource that is essential to all life but that is increasingly threated by human activity. In homage to the silkworms that produced the panels’ silk, he has pictured a mulberry tree with silkworms feeding on the tree’s leaves, their primary source of nourishment. Rabbits and ducks allude to the other creatures with whom we share our planet.
Encouraging Reflection
On the gallery’s walls, visitors find excerpts from the writings of classical Chinese philosophers and poets, including Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE), Laozi (6th century BCE), and Zhuangzi (4th century BCE). Many of the passages refer to the ancient Chinese concept of guan—to observe and appreciate nature by emptying the mind and allowing the natural world to enter. The excerpts are reproduced from Wang’s own calligraphy.
In the end, the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on themselves, their environment, and their place therein. An audio interview with Wang and a digital brochure, which features his notes on creating the panels, offer insights into his artistic process and inspirations.
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.
