My personal and professional focus is on the role art and artists can play in contributing towards the quality of our built environments and the communities that occupy and use them, while encouraging meaningful engagement between artists and the communities which host their work.
I am a founding member of Cut Collective, an Auckland based art collective specialising in art led public projects and bespoke outcomes for commercial application. The work of Cut Collective has been based around producing accessible art encounters outside of traditional and institutional settings, and adopting a collaborative approach to inter-disciplinary projects.
Shared Lines: Aoteroa in Japan 2020
Less Mao, More Elvis 1 & 3. Enamel on paper. 2018. 420mm x 297mm
These pieces are part of a wider collection of works made during a Asia New Zealand Foundation artist residency hosted by Rimbun Dahan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The residency examined my families arrival, presence and departure from Malaysia as Chinese migrants and how their cumulative experiences have informed my own identity as a Chinese New Zealander.
The paper works draw on the phrase ""less mao, more elvis"", pulled from Souchou Yao's writing on The Malayan Emergency where a distinction is made between the experience and sense of identity of Chinese educated youth, and that of the English Methodist educated youth. Both groups existing alongside each other as part of the same secure camps/villages created during the Malayan Emergency. My father was one of those Chinese youth educated at an English school within Kuala Lumpur and it has had an enduring dislocating effect on his sense of identity ever since.
Shared Lines: Kaikōura 2019
kè kǔ nài láo (2018)