A journey in search of light

Journey to the Light:

An Artistic Collaboration Between Guo Yan and Pepe Hidalgo

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Shuyu Kong, Writer and Scholar

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The six-year artistic collaboration between Guo Yan and Pepe Hidalgo began with a story of returning home—or returning to one’s spiritual homeland.

Back in 2020, the world was shaken by a sudden pandemic and plunged into panic. Many underlying vulnerabilities of the globalized era were suddenly exposed: mobility, isolation, strangers, uncertainty, and borders. Two foreigners—one from the East and the other from the West—met in Vancouver, a city shaped by immigrants and strangers, on their own separate journeys of migration. As artists, they both found themselves encountering the age-old existential question: Where do we come from, and where are we going?

Within this unsettled context, the idea of returning to Ararat—or the Promised Land—became an inevitable fantasy, a source of spiritual comfort amidst crisis.

For Guo Yan, her earlier works often used ruins or burned cities as backdrops. The price China paid for three decades of rapid urbanization had rendered the skies over its cities black—evoking a doomsday-like unease and chill. Even when light appeared, it was the dark red glow of burning—an infernal light. Against such settings, she depicted lonely, drifting figures: people entangled in struggle or dreamers wandering alone, their sadness, helplessness, and despair heavy in the desolate atmosphere. The red naked figures in her work are ghosts of those who grew up repressed in booming cities, who left their hometowns, who could not find a home, who had metaphorically died before growing old.

Returning to Mount Ararat and the Promised Land was a brand-new artistic venture, led by Pepe Hidalgo, an artist deeply versed in the Bible, Western civilization, and mythology. The red figures and animals that once populated Noah’s Ark now stretch out and play freely among earthy browns, golden hues, and green-blue mountains and rivers. The sorrow and weight of Guo Yan’s "Lost Cities" are eased by Pepe Hidalgo’s energetic bubbles and vast fertile spaces. In these valleys where milk and honey flow, the red figures at the bottom of Guo Yan’s canvases suddenly seem illuminated by a sacred light, with the potential to soar skyward.

Pepe Hidalgo’s paintings are filled with optimism and complexity, crowded with imagined figures from art history, rooted in his Spanish cultural heritage—rich in religious and humanistic traditions—even though he lives in relative isolation, both linguistically and socially. He has spent years immersed in his studio, where art grants him unlimited creative space and the possibility of finding a kindred spirit in Guo Yan.

Inspired by this vision of the Promised Land, the two artists shared their experiences and dreams, leading to deeper collaboration. The year 2021 marked a particularly fruitful period in their partnership, during which they created six works together. The Tower of Babel, The Far Shore of Dreams, and Noah's Ark in the 21st Century form a thematic group. Under Pepe Hidalgo’s omnipresent energetic bubbles and vibrant cosmic backdrops, Guo Yan’s cities and figures gained new vitality and colour. The Tower of Babel, once a symbol of confusion and division by language and race, transformed into a ladder to colourful, circular universes—vibrant realms brimming with energy and rich matter. Cities at the base of the tower are now surrounded by multicoloured towns, green hills, and red-roofed homes; the central, crystal-clear human figures—reminiscent of forms from both Eastern and Western art history—contemplate, converse, or gaze longingly.

What’s most surprising is how Guo Yan’s crystal figures in Noah’s Ark in the 21st Century take on a new sense of purpose. Their vibrant bodies and affectionate interactions, surrounded by animals, reflect Guo Yan’s full entry into Pepe Hidalgo’s mythic or fairytale-like world. Around them are vast blue seas, golden lands, and in the distance, a towering lighthouse and a red cottage for its keeper—symbols of stability and safety, affirming life through colour and form. The upper half of the canvas is filled with a sky that is both complex and radiant—sun, moon, and stars float freely alongside humanoid forms of air and wind, and colourful bubbles. It’s a heavenly scene, which explains why those crystalline figures appear illuminated, full of hope.

Another set of works from 2021 explores the theme of gardens: A Vibrant Garden of the Future, Entering the Dream Garden, and A Springtime Garden. That year marked the beginning of the pandemic’s retreat, and this series seems to express a hope for the future. Perhaps it also reflects the inner hope that grew from their collaboration.

A Vibrant Garden of the Future is clearly divided into two parts. The upper half depicts four of Pepe Hidalgo’s family members—giant parents and two children—radiating the warmth and colours of their Spanish roots. Behind them is a distinctly Canadian rural landscape: wooden fences, upright trees, golden-brown hills, and distant mountains. Though it’s no longer the mythic Ararat, it shares the same sense of peace, abundance, and homestead, with bubbles of energy floating throughout.

The lower half features Guo Yan’s green trees and forests. Next to a transparent tree bearing golden fruit are angels flying or walking. This green and yellowish-green palette, heavenly in tone, would become a signature colour scheme in Guo Yan’s later works. Together, the green forest and brown earth form a kind of earthly paradise—distinct yet surprisingly harmonious.

Entering the Dream Garden reflects Guo Yan’s memory of Chinese classical gardens, particularly those in Suzhou. The serene, idyllic scenes of “blossoms and full moons” hardly exist anymore in modern China. Four giant human figures by Pepe Hidalgo linger curiously outside a moon gate, peeking in. This gives the piece a dream like, magic realist quality. It captures both a Western imagination of the East and a contemporary nostalgia for the past.

Spring Garden shares with Vibrant Garden a central motif: a yellow-green tree brimming with life. Its leaves float like clouds, and its branches resemble the Arbutus trees commonly found on the American West Coast. Pink-toned couples and naked women frolic among the trees. The key difference is that a man and a woman are standing outside the Spring Garden, gazing into a scene that is clearly artistic. For the first time in Spring Garden, we see a meta-composition—a depiction of art being viewed by the artists themselves.

This theme of art as a subject reappears in the following year’s works: The Explorer and Journey to the Light.The Explorer is a rich, visually complex work filled with a variety of forms. It’s clearly a conceptual piece from Pepe Hidalgo. White geese soar through the sky, massive invisible angels float in the background, and an array of strange, spacecraft-like objects appear—drifting freely through what could be interpreted as a blue river, or perhaps a serpent-like mountain range, or even a coastal wetland. Scattered among them, yet drawing the eye, are Guo Yan’s red children—moving like flying fish, caught in various dynamic poses. Their glowing, healthy skin recalls the indigenous figures in Gauguin’s paintings—full of vitality and strength. At the painting’s centre, a red ladder leads into another painting, breaking the boundary between art and reality, blending them into one interconnected realm.

Journey to the Light is a symbol-rich and metaphorical piece awash in green. Although the light source is clear, the meaning of the title remains elusive. The scene is split between interior and exterior spaces. The characters include a librarian holding a stack of books, a pianist playing music, and even a reference to Munch’s The Scream. There may be nods to cinema and athletes as well. This space—dedicated to art, recreation, and creativity—is bathed in a green light that overflows with life and calmness.

The two artists’ most harmonious and fully realized collaboration to date is Endless Vitality (生生不息). At first glance, it seems like an extension or echo of the colours and landscapes found in Returning to Mount Ararat, yet it is even more radiant and splendid. The inspiration came from a vacation Guo Yan took with her family and friends to the Kelowna Lake region of British Columbia. The upper portion of the painting features a multicoloured sky, scattered with spheres and flaming stones—vivid and romantic. At the centre is a serene blue lake, with relaxed figures sitting or standing on its translucent shore. Children float in transparent inflatable rafts, reminiscent of the Noah’s Ark motif from earlier works. Alongside the real-life models of Guo Yan’s family and friends, the artists also introduced transparent male and female figures—some towering, others miniature. Here, the brushes and imaginations of the two artists achieve a remarkable harmony and integration. Endless Vitality is a direct response to Returning to Mount Ararat from three years earlier. The Promised Land, it turns out, does exist—it lives within the artists’ depiction and imagination of their personal lives in this world.

Their most recent piece, Time Tunnel, uses artistic metaphors as its central theme. At the heart of the composition is a giant canvas. On it is a range of human portraits—faces that Pepe Hidalgo loves to paint, each with different expressions and rendered on a grand scale. Interwoven among them are Guo Yan’s familiar red figures—running and flying, adding movement and vitality. Behind the canvas lies a chilly, otherworldly landscape of white mountains and a deep sky full of stars, as if from another galaxy. Between the canvas and this cosmic background, flocks of birds are flying.

I know that the theme of Time Tunneloriginated from Guo Yan. She grew up by the mountains and caves of the Qinling Range, moved to Xi’an City, then migrated to Chengdu, and eventually crossed the Pacific to Vancouver. For her, the Time Tunnel is the journey of her artistic life. No wonder she and Pepe Hidalgo turned this Time Tunnel into a metaphor for art. It is their shared tribute to art — the art they both love and have dedicated themselves to — a hymn to the art tunnel that led them from their own mountains to a creative shared vision of Ararat.

Through art, these two strangers from opposite ends of the Earth have found their kindred spirits.

 

July 27, 2025,  Vancouver to London