Left a bit, Right a bit, Up a bit, Down a bit
Solo Exhibition CC Kua
How does it feel like to put up an exhibition? It is always filled with fear and excitement. This experience is similar to exposing a diary of personal thoughts and feelings to others. However, I can’t wait to share my pieces and hope they’ll resonate with the viewers, or trigger some brain activity at the same time.
I ponder continuously the questions about ‘precision’ and ‘centralization’. I assume that I do not have antisocial personality disorder, it’s just that collecting fragments from our daily-life has always been my interest. I take society as a big bread, while the majority is heading towards totality (the big bread), my passion as an artist is to pick up those bread crumbs (the fragments or values that have been left behind). My oeuvre is never attached to specific topics, they carry a sense of scatteredness instead.
I recall the experience of having someone to scratch my back: by instructing (left a bit, right a bit, up a bit, down a bit……) we tried hard to find the itch. It turned out that the itch doesn’t exist at all, it may be just a psychological effect. However, I am into this seemingly meaningless and futile process. To me, such activity is vital especially in today’s capitalist society that stresses on utilitarianism and efficiency. What makes us human after all? I am afraid of this increasingly convenient and systematic world.
Perhaps, my utopia lies within daily life, it is no longer on the other shore, but it exists right here right now. I take actions on trivial things. In a world without the opposite shore, our vision stopped focusing on a straight line, yet we start to look around for different perspectives, we squat, we jump, we lean back, and we lean forward. We will never arrive as there is no destination, but we keep on walking. So why do we still choose to depart? That is to approach, to create relationships, and to experience the beauty of uncertainties.
Paintings and drawings attract me more than other art forms. It provides a moment of tranquility, incitement, mind-twitching or inexplicable mixed emotions, even if they are still. Years ago, drawing was only my weekend or after-work activity, it was personal but not isolated nor closed. I remember that state of mind, it was like being in a big empty room with natural lights shining in through the window. Sometimes, subconsciously I fall into a mode of concentration when I am drawing or painting, often when I come back to myself I am with my opening mouth, not to mention experiencing epiphanies. I draw, I paint, because ‘I have something to say’, but it goes beyond language, although it implies the element of language. We humans, think in language. But, in paintings, the functionality of language no longer works smoothly.
Years of accumulation in visual training makes me feel like a visual hunter, I observe shape and colours of things and happenings, at the same time, I search and capture within memories and knowledge; once the observation and knowledge collide with each other, bam! That’s it, I will be excited for some period of time before laying the idea or composition down on a surface. I hope that my works carry the poetic essence of haiku, instead of being like a cheesy love pop song.
CC Kua
Bio
Born in Sungai Petani, Kedah in 1991, Leo, like sleeping a lot but having insomnia lately. In 2013, CC Kua gained her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Graphic Design and Illustration, The One Academy (degree conferred by the University of Hertfordshire, UK). In 2019, she will be a MFA graduate from Tainan National University of the Arts.
Date
08 – 21 June 2019
Visit times
1.00pm- 6:00pm
Venue
Lostgens’ Contemporary Art Space
