Lot Essay
Through the series Private Space produced in the late 1980s, Mao expressed his sense of boredom, regrets and contradictions towards a personal family crisis. Private Space: Woman Figure with Mosquito Net (Lot 563) sets in a small dim room in which a naked woman lies on a wooden bed with a mosquito net dangling above her. The woman buried in thought is rather decorative while the airy mosquito net haunts the set. She is left no chance to escape under the net's confinement. The physical and mental stress of detention, loneliness and fear cannot be more explicit. The piece vividly tells the artist's repressed mind conflicting with the real world.