A veil conceals, but its presence also announces that something is worth concealing. In The Blue Veil, Jin Sha paints the moment before the curtain opens, or just after it has begun to close. Working in gongbi — the meticulous fine-brush silk painting tradition — he quietly empties figures out of Renaissance masterpieces. He leaves only garments and accessories floating in what he calls this his liubai, the intended blank through which the viewer enters the work.

It features paintings made specifically for Sydney, and it is the first time an Australian image has entered Jin Sha's tribute to the masters. He has placed Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly — known as Australia's own faceless figure, disguised in a helmet that has haunted the Australian imagination — into dialogue with Renaissance masters. In doing so, he unravels a greater, more nuanced conversation on the stretch of time and art history. Jin Sha is unambiguous that Nolan enters his pantheon with Leonardo and Dürer as a master to be spoken with. It is also the moment his practice quietly acknowledges the country he has been coming to for years. The weirdness of this confluence of European art is the same weirdness embodied by Australia as an awkward colonial outpost, surrounded by the Asia Pacific. This act of recontextualising art history into the Chinese context and tradition through gongbi complicates Australian mythmaking in a playful, yet inexplicable way.