Emily Cheng’s paintings and drawings feature elaborate designs—often oriented around a mandala form—that evoke spirituality and mysticism. She encodes the circular structures with natural imagery and vibrant, abstract patterns, many of which allude to eastern spiritual and aesthetic traditions. “The paintings’ translucent colors and delicate, linear fragments seem to levitate before the eyes, as if bits of Chinese ceramics or embroidery were drifting through layers of folded, colored air,” wrote Roberta Smith of Cheng’s work. Her paintings recall works by Hilma af Klint, who incorporated a similar palette, use of circular forms, and quasi-floral imagery in abstract paintings that represented complex spiritual and philosophical concerns and systems.