By Contributor Lee Sharrock Marie Antoinette
Artist Xu Yang. Courtesy of Von Goetz
Forget-me-not’s, snails and puppy dogs tails: Imagine Sir Elton John’s Louis XIV costume for his 50th birthday party in 1991–complete with towering white wig decorated with a miniature silver ship–combine that with a Kawaii aesthetic and the Baroque interiors of 17th-century Château de Lantheuil in Normandy and you might come close to imagining the Surrealist wit of artist Xu Yang.
Château de Lantheuil in the heart of Normandy has opened its grand salons to the vivid work of contemporary Chinese artist Xu Yang. Titled Forget Me Not and curated by Lucy von Goetz (Von Goetz art advisory), the exhibition unfolds as a rare and resonant dialogue between eras, geographies, and aesthetic traditions. The exhibition’s title is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, which asks how the act of remembrance might become a tool for liberation.
Installation view, Forget Me Not. Image courtesy of von Goetz
Image courtesy of von Goetz.
Baroque Meets Bubblegum: The Surreal World of Xu Yang
Yang’s stunning solo exhibition at the historic Château–a French Louis XIII period castle–is a culturally layered visual treat. Yang was invited by curator Lucy von Goetz to creates a series of new works for a one-off exhibition in the Chateau, and her unforgettable paintings star cute puppies wearing XIII century Poufs inspired by the surrounding sculptures and portraits of the aristocratic Turgot family, depicted in a candy-coloured palette of peonie pink and bubblegum blue.
The wigs depicted by Yang in her paintings are mounted on Chinese opera mask stands and they are decorated with flowers, jewels, wheat, grasses and fruit. Inspired by the opulent ‘poufs’ worn by Marie Antoinette–whose extravagantly decorated wigs were statements of personal power and creativity–Yang’s wigs also reference drag and the gendered conception of the colour pink. The ‘pouf sentimental’ hairstyle was created by hairdresser Leonard Autie and debuted on the Duchesse de Chartres in 1774, famously adorned with 14 yards of gauze, figurines, a plate of cherries and a parrot.
Yang depicts small dogs wearing wigs–her painting ‘Society Portrait-Le Pouf Sentimental is inspired by Marie Antoinette’s beloved pug dog, Mops.
Installation view, Forget Me Not, Xu Yang – Image courtesy of von Goetz
Courtesy of von Goetz
The Power of Pink: Reclaiming Colour and Identity
Xu Yang gave me some insight into the palette of pink and blue, and the recurring motif of a towering wig: “Pink was a powerful colour in the 17th century, as less red than red, it was a colour for young men, while blue was for ladies. The meaning shifted with American baby showers and Pop culture, like Mattel’s barbie. Pink especially is misunderstood as cliche and silliness because of its current association with womanhood, but I think it’s a powerful colour to address because of that. Personally when I was little I was never given any pink clothes to wear as my mum thought darker colours are more durable, but I wanted pink dresses like the characters from fairy tale books. Because of my “not-deserving” of pink, I never admitted pink is my favourite colour. Until I found characters with pink hair in cosplay then led to the art of drag, I picked up pink when I was searching for myself through dress up.”
Image by Bater & Street – Installation view, ‘Forget Me Not’, Xu Yang. Courtesy of von Goetz.
Courtesy of von Goetz.
Candy-Coloured Court Life: Painting Puppies in Poufs
Xu Yang (b. 1996, Shandong, China), now based in London, presents a newly developed body of work inspired by both the ornate history of Rococo and her own Chinese heritage. Her paintings and sculptures are dispersed throughout the Château, mingling with centuries-old interiors, family heirlooms, and portraits that bear witness to the French Enlightenment and beyond.
The exhibition is not merely a visual installation—it is a cross-cultural conversation. Yang’s visual language is rich with symbolism and personal mythology: wigs, porcelain, insects, dumplings, and blue forget-me-not petals become narrative anchors, weaving together stories of memory, identity, and legacy. Her approach is deeply textured, merging the decorative excess of Rococo with conceptual contemporary art. Through lush brushwork and carefully constructed ceramic forms, she evokes both transience and permanence.
“In something as intimate as the fingerprints of my mother on a sealed dumpling, I see an entire family and community,” Xu reflects. “In something as delicate as the blue petals of a forget-me-not, I see the precariousness of time. And in something as enduring as gold, I see the power of legacy.”
Artist Xu Yang. Courtesy of Von Goetz
The Château as a Living Canvas: A Dialogue Across Centuries
The setting of Yang’s exhibition could not be more fitting. Château de Lantheuil is a stunning 17th-century estate located in the heart of Normandy’s Bessin region, between Caen and Bayeux. Built in 1613 in classic Louis XIII architectural style, the historic château has been the ancestral home of the Marquis Turgot family for centuries. Rich in history, Château de Lantheuil was occupied by both German and British forces during World War II–and famously–General Montgomery used its dining room table to plan the Battle of Caen in 1944. Today, the descendants of the Turgot family still reside at this remarkable Normandy landmark.
Eugenia Durandy de Naurois-Turgot, an art historian and director of the Château’s cultural programme, first welcomed Xu Yang and Lucy von Goetz in 2023, a visit that sparked the idea for the exhibition.
Lucy von Goetz explained to me how she first met Xu Yang: “I met Xu Yang for the first time 18 months ago and got to know her practice over the course of many studio visits. I was taken by Yang’s extreme technical skill in painting and the conceptual and symbolic depth to her work. We have had so many rich & fascinating conversations around Chinese culture and life, portraiture, still-life painting, porcelain and its history, performance, femininity and identity, beauty, politics, nature, time, and memory.”
Eugenia Durandy de Naurois-Turgot and Lucy van Goetz met as students at Sotheby’s Institute, and formed a strong friendship, going on to collaborate with each other on the Xu Yau exhibition when Lucy posed the idea of exhibiting Xu’s art at the Château. Eugenia told me that at the heart of the exhibition is her wish to “make the Château a place of living dialogue between past, present and future.”
Image by Bater & Street. Installation view, ‘Forget Me Not’, Xu Yang – Courtesy of von Goetz
Courtesy of von Goetz. Image by Bater & Street.
Symbols and Storytelling: The Language of Still Life
Yang’s work is displayed subtly within the grand rooms of the Château, appearing to create a dialogue with its layered history, its French gardens, wartime stories and art collections. Yet her pieces do not sit passively in the space; they question and converse, breathing new life into a setting defined by heritage. Yang’s reimagined still lifes and narrative paintings reframe what legacy can mean in today’s global, hybridized world. Lucy von Goetz explained to me that, although Yang visited the space when preparing for the exhibition, her work was already engrained with a Baroque meets Old Master style and aesthetic, so it was a perfect pairing of artist with location when the idea of the Château de Lautheil exhibition arose:
“Yang’s artworks in Forget Me Not were not created in response to the Chateau’s art collection, history and family lineage. The pieces were created as a body of work for Forget Me Not to deal with the questions we posited curatorially and conceptually. I took Yang on a site visit in August 2024 to see the Chateau and it was definitely useful for her to see the setting to imagine the place the works would sit. It was also enjoyable to learn more the history of the Chateau and some of the stories connected there. But I think ultimately the works are much wider than saying they are in response to the setting. It was the works that came first then the setting. Yang has long been making Rococo and Old Masters influenced paintings, often speaking of French Court painting, and Dutch still lifes, and the soft power of the cultivation of female identity. It just felt right to find a setting that could hold Yang’s work in a new way.”
Lucy von Goetz describes the show as “a merging of the earthly and the surreal, the East and the West, the historic and the contemporary.” She adds, “This exhibition sets out our commitment to showcasing the finest artists whose work resonates with the time and setting they inhabit.”
Xu Yang’s practice is as intellectually rigorous as it is visually sumptuous. A graduate of Wimbledon College of Arts and the Royal College of Art in London, she continues to challenge boundaries between personal history and public narrative, often inserting her own image into her paintings as a way of confronting societal expectations and inviting reflection.
Yang’s paintings are full of symbols and metaphors such as eyes, snails, butterflies, wheat sheafs and even a disembodied finger. Her attention to detail and use of finely tuned still life techniques harks back to the Dutch Still life painters, while the paintings are full of multi-layered cultural symbolism.
Lucy von Goetz. Image by Bater & Street.
Bater & Street
Legacy in Gold and Blue: The Finger and the Butterfly
I asked von Goetz to explain the significance of a mysterious gold finger in the corner of one small painting with a blue butterfly at its centre: “Over lunch a few months back Yang was speaking to me about what we leave behind when we die. How often it is a combination of jewellery and artworks that make it to be handed down to new generations. We spoke about these trinkets that we have left as our memory and way of holding on to people when they are gone. The value that we can place in something is everything and nothing at the same time. This piece includes a lot of adornments and beautiful items, Yang places the gold finger at the bottom of the work to literally ‘point out’ the danger of placing value on the wrong things, this is King Midas’s finger – who famously was confronted with the dangerous reality of his desires. The blue butterfly in the centre is a ‘morpho’ butterfly and is a reminder that we have physical bodies and that we have souls–nature’s grace and mystery.”
Image by Bater & Street. ‘It is worth nothing. It is worth everything.’ by Xu Yang. Courtesy of von Goetz.
Courtesy of von Goetz. Image by Bater & Street
The Fig and the Forbidden: Painting Female Desire
Another recurring symbol is the fig, which Xu Yang explains to me is a metaphor for sexuality and the guilt women often carry relating to their own bodies: “Sexuality and feeling of shame or guilt for women, famously Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their body after eaten Forbidden Fruit. I think women–especially those with more conservative upbringings like myself–are often feeling ashamed of talking about desire and sexuality openly, while I’m trying to untie the knot of that ideology being instilled in me growing up, I’m still not finding it the easiest subject to talk about verbally. So I started including drawings and paintings in my work to speak for me.”
Forget Me Not is more than an exhibition—it is a meditation on time, memory, and the enduring power of cultural exchange. In placing a contemporary Chinese artist’s deeply personal work inside a French château steeped in Enlightenment thought, the show becomes a living, breathing fusion of past and present.
Installation view, Forget Me Not. Image courtesy of von Goetz.
Courtesy of von Goetz.
Xu Yang: Forget Me Not is on view at Château de Lantheuil, Normandy, until 10th July, 2025. Curated by Lucy von Goetz with the kind permission of the Turgot family.
Image by Bater & Street – Installation view – ‘Forget Me Not’, Xu Yang. Courtesy of von Goetz.
Courtesy of von Goetz.
Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions