Isaac Chong Wai
Help! Help? Help.
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Isaac Chong Wai
b. 1990, Guangdong province, China
Isaac Chong Wai graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University with a BA in Visual Arts in 2012, and the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, with a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies in 2016. Chong works with diverse media, including performance, site-specific installation, public art, video, photography and multimedia. He transforms the tensions, intervention and interactions of human bodies into a microcosm of human relationality in social systems. Strongly influenced by personal events and global phenomena, he engages themes of collectivism and individualism, politics of time and space, border, migration, war, identity politics, LGBTQ, public sphere and human rights.
His recent solo exhibition includes “Chapter A : The Rehearsal of the Futures” (Apartment der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2018), “Chapter B: An Artistic Archive of Borders” (Kunstraum München, Munich, Germany, 2018), and “What is the future in the past? And what is the past in the future?” (Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, Germany, 2016). In 2018, Chong was commissioned by Hong Kong M+ Museum to produce the performance work Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises, which was performed as part of the “M+ Live Art: Audience as Performer” project. His recent group exhibitions include “BERLIN MASTERS” (Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, Germany, 2017), and “Forecast Forum” (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, 2017). Chong’s work is collected by the Burger Collection.
Chong currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Hong Kong.
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Question #1: Is the World Your Friend? / 2017
The work originates from a traumatising attack by a stranger on the street in a foreign country, which led the artist to contemplate one’s position in the society and in the world.
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Hong Kong and Hong Kong / 2017
Chong’s new mixed media installation Hong Kong and Hong Kong induces the humming of the Chinese national anthem, in which a Hong Kong SAR flag is “frozen and suspended” in a resin crystal, forever dormant. How is it like to hold Hong Kong unchanged for 50 years?
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Falling Exercise and Help! Help? Help / 2016
Falling Exercise and Help! Help? Help, document the collective performances of falling and aiding. Through the cyclical processes of falling and standing up, and the reciprocal role of helping and being helped, Chong uses his performances to investigate the formation of individual and collective consciousness, as well as the consolidation of societal norms.
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The horizon where we can never touch / 2014
Seven participants were invited to perform in Bremen at the Immigration Office Gallery. They were asked to adjust their height in order to get “a line” above their heads. Every participant took turns to pose as the model according to whom the other participants adjusted their height. This work highlights the subjectivity of norms and standards and how easily it is subject to change: who is leading the game? Who shall we all copy to meet so-called standards?
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Equilibrium / 2012-2014
Equilibrium is a series of performances with video, photography and paper documentations. The works engage in interaction of human scales and bodies, and highlight the subjectivity of norms and standards where the body is rendered as marker of physical territories.
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Media Coverage
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