The Watchdog Series

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The Watchdog Series begins with a charged foundation: each painting’s ground layer draws from either the canon of Western nude painting or the glossy allure of women in contemporary magazines. Renaissance and academic nudes, once censored, now revered as high art, collide with mass-produced images often dismissed as vulgar, erotic, or disposable. By setting these traditions side by side, Boo Sze Yang exposes how authority legitimises some bodies while policing others.

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Upon this base, dogs, text, and ornamental motifs are layered, evoking both propaganda posters and decorative screens. In these works, the “watchdog” embodies a double role: protector and enforcer, mirroring the paradox of the nanny state: safeguarding citizens while policing behaviour and thought. Censorship becomes a silent presence, shaping what can be seen, spoken, or remembered.

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Through irony and theatrical exaggeration, the Watchdog Series destabilises inherited ideals of beauty, virtue, and power, compelling us to ask: who defines decency, and who watches the watchdog?