statement

I often feel as though I am a writer who, through some fated mix-up, was granted the tools of a visual artist instead. Many of my works, in one way or another, trade in the currency of words, concerned as they remain with how the visual/perceptual can possibly convey the linguistic/conceptual. My practice, then, begins with drawing, but becomes bound up in a strategy that incorporates installation, performance, and participation.

The drawing included in this publication is one more example of the "mute image", the artist's obstinate effort to overcome its very refusal to speak simultaneously being its generative force. Translated from careful observation of an impastoed canvas, Rivers Grow Small obtains a dual appearance: its marks can refer to either the flat surface of a painting, or the three-dimensional surface of the figure. Yet the drawing was made by repeating only what's given in a painted original—so where did this extra otherness come from? Perhaps it is the signature of the act of repetition itself. This trace—analogous to that which exists "between the lines" of text—reveals itself alongside a few actual words of rendered script, taken from the poem of the same title. Together, they evoke a sense of what it may mean to return to the sites of the past.

bio

born: 1985, Hong Kong

education

University of British Columbia, BASc, 2008

selected awards/honors

Joseph Beuys Memorial Scholarship, NSCAD University, 2014
Robert Pope Foundation Painting Scholarship, NSCAD University, 2012 & 2014
BC Arts Council Scholarship Award, British Columbia Arts Council, 2011–13
Harrison McCain Scholarship, NSCAD University, 2010–13

selected publications

NSCAD University; Free Coffee. Halifax, Nova Scotia: NSCAD University p. 77, 2013
The Periodical Project; Illusion. Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Periodical Project p. 8-9, 2013

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Anna Leonowens Gallery: Return, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2013
Corridor Gallery: Little Things, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2013

selected group shows

Rencontre interuniversitaire de performance actuelle: RIPA 2014, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2014
Anna Leonowens Gallery: I I W I I (it is what it is), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2014
Swoon Fine Art: Spectre, Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2013
Seeds Gallery: March of Prints, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2013