작품 상세

With an androgynous look on the face fully flushed to picture frame, it is difficult to tell the gender, even with a decided feminine aura. The bald pate serves to enhance the features of the face, if not the expression, and the rendition in grey seems to simulate the veracity of photographs. In her multiple faces-and-figures composition like this one in the Many Splendoured Thing exhibition, Chong Siew Ying explores the entity of faces as landscape with elements of mystery and beauty, and with an ornamental plum blossom or two. She had intoned: "I like the idea of telling a story that has no beginning or end." The face skirts the line between the Classical and the Contemporary, a fusion as well as a contradiction. On beauty, she added: "This beauty is somewhat forced, as it seems to be that beauty in contemporary art has almost become taboo," As Oscar Wilde put it: "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." The sentiment still holds, even if the 'sitter' is not real-life. The world belongs to the bold and the brave, that's Chong Siew Ying who headed for France for further art studies, at the L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Versailles, 1991-1994) and L'Atelier 63 (1994-1996), supporting herself by working as an au pair part-time. Proof of faith was when she was given solos at the Maison Tch'A, Atelier d'Maravel and Gallery Café Panique, while also keeping busy with the prints biennials in France, Spain, Holland and Taiwan. On her return in 2000, she was awarded the artist's residency at Rimbun Dahan, which was followed by another at the Vermont Studio Centre (Freeman Fellowship). Accolades included the Special Award in the Young Contemporary Artists (BMS) competition (2002), a finalist in the Hong Kong Sovereign Art Prize (2009). She was featured in the 2015 Art Stage Singapore. Her work was featured in the Malaysian Shadows and Images travelling exhibition in Malmo (Sweden), Barcelona and Madrid (Spain). She first graduated with a Diploma in Graphic Design at the Petaling Jaya College of Art and Design.