Visual Arts

Against the backdrop of the global pandemic and local political unrest, we were able to rise above the unprecedented challenges we faced in preparation of our graduate show this year.
It has been our greatest desire to share and celebrate the fruition of our 2-year research and creative works to the public. We are grateful for our venue sponsor – Osage Art Foundation – for allowing us to make this happen at their renowned gallery space in the coming July. Also, a big thankyou to our all time supporter Professor Mayching Kao, without her generous Art Funds sponsorship, our show will not be as complete.

We are excited to announce “Make _ art Not War [T/F]” a group show of 4 MFA graduates from The Chinese University of Hong Kong: Iv Tsz Man Chan, Chang Yue Lam, Fung Hoi Shan and Wong Sze Wai. Our creative practices vary in different media, exploring themes ranging from the problematic body, post-industrial society, human-animal relationships and the memory space, offering multiple layers of perspectives and possibilities of artistic creation.
Our show title is inspired by the famous 60s slogan “Make Love, Not War”. Presented with a twist – the dedication in art amidst chaos – we bring out the absurdity (or not) of our unwavering commitment towards art-making and our faith in its power.

Iv Tsz Man Chan
As a lived body, our mortal flesh can be a medium to understand the World. The body connects our conscious and emotions to all unknowns. That includes the ultimate attempt to answer (but could never be resolved) the enigma of reincarnation and heaven or is it merely the horror of death? Like most Greek Tragedy and Mythology, we sin and sacrifice. Shall we be able to seep through thin layers of membranes upon death and transgress to taste the true meaning of life? In this show, Chan’s installation work consists of materials transformation which resembles fragmentations and abstractions of the body. The sculptural expression attempts to serve as a means to awake and pacify our problematic body within the context of phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

Chang Yue Lam
The works of Chang Yue Lam proposed “Microscopic Narrative” as a thinking method. We see the world through the looking glass called “knowledge”. We appropriate and spread general values which encompass us to form a set of thoughts. A macro perspective is an effort to spare the particulars, since particulars have no place in “as a whole”. Through delicate observation and interpretation, we may return to the basics to review what our cognition consists of. “Little stories” of everyday life can actually help us address bigger social issues to counter this monolithic ideology. This project is to study from eras of “pre-industrial” to “industrial” up till “post-industrial”, to review the relationship between printmaking, printing industry, and contemporary media. Through a micro-lens towards the family-run printing house, traces are identified and experiences are revisited. Perhaps it is the time to reshape the viewpoints and values from different generations while reconsidering one’s role in the world.

Fung Hoi Shan
Fung Hoi Shan focuses on the relationship between animals and cities, as well as animals and human imagination. Fung depicts the wrestling between the living space of animals and the human through a series of paintings. Lifestyles of animals in imaginary spaces also shown in the paintings through the surreal images.

Wong Sze Wai
Wong Sze Wai’s artworks focus on the relationship between memory and imagination. They highlight the loss of memories and represent the process of recollection in a way of inscription and erasure. Ruin, as the subject, analogizes to a body of memory and history as traces of human activities and changing times fill such abandoned places. Her experience of visiting ruins, wondering about ruins is much like recalling memories because we imagine the history of ruins, just like we imagine our own memories.