One of the most controversial photographers of the early 2000s, Ren Hang is an artist whose work I always come back to. However, despite his talent as a photographer, the work that I find myself revisiting the most is not his photography, but rather his writing. Ren Hang’s poetry has often been sidelined in favor of his visual work. Not many people knew he published or even wrote poetry at all. I was initially introduced to Ren Hang through a Tumblr rabbit hole back in high school, before seeing his work in Frank Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry magazine in 2016. As an impressionable teenager who felt like he was discovering something niche, Ren Hang quickly cemented himself as one of my biggest inspirations.

There are so many things I can say about Ren Hang, so maybe I'll start with this: I would like to talk a little bit about the beauty and importance of translations. 

Due to Ren Hang’s prevalence as a visual artist, there are not many ways to find his writing online. All of his published poetry work was produced only in small and limited runs. The amount of translations that exist are fewer, both physically and digitally.  His poetry follows themes of love, lust, and loneliness. Ren Hang also doesn’t shy away from writing about the erotic, something that is carried over from his photography.

Arguably the most important aspect of Ren Hang's work, is how he details the queer experience. His work is unapologetically crude, a defiant display of his sexuality. A rare sight during the time of his emergence as an artist in China.

In 2016 I read the depression diary of Ren Hang off of the website of an online magazine called The Chronicle.  The webpage doesn’t exist anymore, but the journal was a depraved thing. The ramblings of a sick man before he inevitably took his own life, translated. I don’t think I properly understood it at 16, but I resonated strongly with the words. Not exactly through the content, but rather how he expressed these feelings. Very simplistic! I admired his ability to convey his feelings of sadness in such a plain matter. 

Although the diary writing was a lot more intimate, I drew similarities between his entries with his published work. Most artists over romanticize their own plight, or rather struggle to properly convey what they feel when given constraints. To me, his work & the translations embodied the idea of less is more.  I felt that there was some sort of charm in these rough translations. How he gave form to his suffering.

He being Ren Hang, which actually meant the translations of Ren Hang. The act of translating something is inherently a transformation. Translators have to take creative liabilities. Certain phrases have no direct translations, or maybe they feel a foreign audience would fail to understand what the artist has wished to convey. Translations themselves are a form of art. They are not to be handled haphazardly, as to not to disrespect the original work. 

In the same vein, even a proper translation can not replace the original work. I was aware that I had fallen in love with the translations of someone’s words, rather than their actual words. However, the existence of these translations are what gave me a chance to fall in love in the first place.

There is a certain romance in the refusal of a translation. This is how this is meant to exist, so this is how it will continue to exist. Unadulterated and without change. Certain works require the entirety of a context to be understood, whether it be cultural, historical, or even personal. Which is to say certain things need not to be translated. If the audience wishes to consume or rather understand a piece of art, the audience should find their own means to achieve this.  It is important that the consumption of art is not a one sided-relationship. In order to build taste, one must learn the surrounding philosophy of an artist.

Not many know this, but this spread from Yêu Yêu doesn't mean a thing! Well, it used to mean something.

The text has been purposely translated (poorly) from English, to Chinese, to Vietnamese. With each pass through a different language more and more of the meaning in the original text was lost. The result is a vomit of Vietnamese, retaining less of a proper sentence structure and more of a mess of feelings. When Yêu Yêu was originally published by Superblooom* in 2024, this intimacy of knowledge was forgotten as more and more people started to obtain the work.  After I began to receive questions from Vietnamese readers, I realized that the lack of context made the writing seem sloppy.  However, my intention has always been to pay homage to an artist I love. To this day, Ren Hang continues to inspire my work.

This remains true despite me never having actually properly read one of his poems, only ever a translation.

One of the most controversial photographers of the early 2000s, Ren Hang is an artist whose work I always come back to. However, despite his talent as a photographer, the work that I find myself revisiting the most is not his photography, but rather his writing. Ren Hang’s poetry has often been sidelined in favor of his visual work. Not many people knew he published or even wrote poetry at all. I was initially introduced to Ren Hang through a Tumblr rabbit hole back in high school, before seeing his work in Frank Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry magazine in 2016. As an impressionable teenager who felt like he was discovering something niche, Ren Hang quickly cemented himself as one of my biggest inspirations.

There are so many things I can say about Ren Hang, so maybe I'll start with this: I would like to talk a little bit about the beauty and importance of translations. 

Due to Ren Hang’s prevalence as a visual artist, there are not many ways to find his writing online. All of his published poetry work was produced only in small and limited runs. The amount of translations that exist are fewer, both physically and digitally.  His poetry follows themes of love, lust, and loneliness. Ren Hang also doesn’t shy away from writing about the erotic, something that is carried over from his photography.

Arguably the most important aspect of Ren Hang's work, is how he details the queer experience. His work is unapologetically crude, a defiant display of his sexuality. A rare sight during the time of his emergence as an artist in China.

In 2016 I read the depression diary of Ren Hang off of the website of an online magazine called The Chronicle.  The webpage doesn’t exist anymore, but the journal was a depraved thing. The ramblings of a sick man before he inevitably took his own life, translated. I don’t think I properly understood it at 16, but I resonated strongly with the words. Not exactly through the content, but rather how he expressed these feelings. Very simplistic! I admired his ability to convey his feelings of sadness in such a plain matter. 

Although the diary writing was a lot more intimate, I drew similarities between his entries with his published work. Most artists over romanticize their own plight, or rather struggle to properly convey what they feel when given constraints. To me, his work & the translations embodied the idea of less is more.  I felt that there was some sort of charm in these rough translations. How he gave form to his suffering.

He being Ren Hang, which actually meant the translations of Ren Hang. The act of translating something is inherently a transformation. Translators have to take creative liabilities. Certain phrases have no direct translations, or maybe they feel a foreign audience would fail to understand what the artist has wished to convey. Translations themselves are a form of art. They are not to be handled haphazardly, as to not to disrespect the original work. 

In the same vein, even a proper translation can not replace the original work. I was aware that I had fallen in love with the translations of someone’s words, rather than their actual words. However, the existence of these translations are what gave me a chance to fall in love in the first place.

There is a certain romance in the refusal of a translation. This is how this is meant to exist, so this is how it will continue to exist. Unadulterated and without change. Certain works require the entirety of a context to be understood, whether it be cultural, historical, or even personal. Which is to say certain things need not to be translated. If the audience wishes to consume or rather understand a piece of art, the audience should find their own means to achieve this.  It is important that the consumption of art is not a one sided-relationship. In order to build taste, one must learn the surrounding philosophy of an artist.

Not many know this, but this spread from Yêu Yêu doesn't mean a thing! Well, it used to mean something.

The text has been purposely translated (poorly) from English, to Chinese, to Vietnamese. With each pass through a different language more and more of the meaning in the original text was lost. The result is a vomit of Vietnamese, retaining less of a proper sentence structure and more of a mess of feelings. When Yêu Yêu was originally published by Superblooom* in 2024, this intimacy of knowledge was forgotten as more and more people started to obtain the work.  After I began to receive questions from Vietnamese readers, I realized that the lack of context made the writing seem sloppy.  However, my intention has always been to pay homage to an artist I love. To this day, Ren Hang continues to inspire my work.

This remains true despite me never having actually properly read one of his poems, only ever a translation.