Whitney Duan

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist
Whitney Duan
Banquet (Rainbow Chan)
oil, sand and gold leaf on canvas
© the artist

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan 陳雋然 is an artist and musician whose work weaves together sound, textiles and performance. As a child of Hong Kong migrants, she belongs to a generation of Australian artists interrogating and subverting the tropes of their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences to express their cross-cultural identity.

‘I discovered Rainbow’s work as a teenager,’ says Whitney Duan. ‘She became a beacon of inspiration as she navigated pressures to pursue the non-creative career path encouraged by many migrant parents.

‘In this portrait, the banquet table becomes a stage for these tensions – between tradition and reinvention, inheritance and authorship. The fruits, laden with symbolism, reference her mother’s Weitou cultural heritage, whose peoples were Hong Kong’s first settlers. Weitou women’s cultural knowledge, including ritual songs and laments, underpin much of Rainbow’s work as she seeks to conserve fading oral histories and decide how to receive them in the face of change,’ says Duan.

Painted on reclaimed canvas, destined for landfill, this work echoes the themes of preservation and transformation from Duan’s own experience of Australian–Chinese cultural identity. Her portrait pays homage to Chan’s practice while reflecting on the ways we shape – and reshape – our cultural inheritances.