Deer Life is an oil painting by Chinese-born, Pittsburgh-based artist Su Su, who is renowned for creating fantastical, dreamlike oil paintings that offer a new and unique understanding of intercultural exchange—a jittery, beautiful hybrid of mass media, pop culture, history, and memory with the capacity to shape our understanding of our interconnected world.

The image on which this painting is based is evocative of a one hundred deer porcelain vase from China, a common style of vase dating to the Qing dynasty period. The original vases show deer frolicking in a natural landscape devoid of humans, among trees with criss-crossed branches. The term “hundred deer” is intended to suggest an abundance of blessings rather than a specific reference to an exact number.

In Su Su’s composition, the ancient deer share the scene with cartoon images of Bambi, playfully milling together around a Surreal landscape dominated by an image of Su Su herself.

By blending references to American cultural icons such as Walt Disney characters with images from Chinese art history, such as these deer, or peaches and flowers taken from artworks in institutional museum collections, Su Su’s works speak to the complicated and confusing experiences she has had as an immigrant to the United States. The distorted, swirling world of liquified pop iconographies and Chinese symbolism melting together with Su Su’s face and body reflects her struggle with the misunderstandings that shape the way China and the United States understand and portray each other’s cultures.