Isaac Chong Wai
Isaac Chong Wai (b. 1990, Guangdong, China) works with diverse media, including performance, site-specific installation, public art, video, photography and mixed media. He transforms the tensions, intervention and interactions of human bodies into a microcosm of human relationality in social systems. Influenced by personal events and global phenomena, he engages themes of collectivism and individualism, politics of time and space, border, migration, war, militarism, racism, identity politics, LGBTQ, public sphere and human rights.
His recent solo exhibitions include “Post-Mythical Accidents” (Una Boccata d’Arte, Fondazione Elpis and Galleria Continua, Castiglione di Sicily, Italy, 2022); “If we keep crying, we will go blind” (Zilberman, Istanbul, Turkey, 2022); “Leaderless” (Bilsart, Istanbul, Turkey, 2021); “What is the future in the past? And what is the Past in the Future?” (Zilberman, Berlin, Germany, 2019); “Chapter A: The Rehearsal of the Futures” (Apartment der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2018); and “Chapter B: An Artistic Archive of Borders” (Kunstraum München, Munich, Germany, 2018). In 2018, Chong was commissioned by M+ to produce the performance work “Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises”.
Chong’s recent group exhibitions include “Spheres of Interest” (ifa-Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2022); “Forming Communities: Berliner Wege” (Kindl Museum, Berlin, Germany, 2022); “BEYOND” (Hamburger Kusnthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 2022); “Carried by the Wind” (PF25, Atelier Mondial, Basel, Switzerland, 2022); “17th Contemporary Istanbul” (Istanbul, Turkey, 2022); “transeuropa [X]” (European Festival for Performing Arts, Hildesheim, Germany, 2021); “Next Act: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong” (Asia Society Hong Kong Center, Hong Kong, 2020); “The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay” (Times Museum, Guangzhou, China, 2019); “Living Sound—Expanding the Extramusical” (MOCA Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan, 2019); “The D-Tale: Video Art from the Pearl River Delta” (Time Art Center, Berlin, Germany, 2018), “BERLIN MASTERS” (Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, Germany, 2017); and “Forecast Forum” (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, 2017).
Chong currently lives and works in Berlin and Hong Kong.
- /
- /
- /
- /
- /
- /
- /
- /
- /
-
Haribo Wall - Gold (Under Construction) / 2017–2019
In Haribo Wall – Gold (Under Construction) (2017-2019), the transmutation of barrier-making parts takes a systematic breakthrough. By making solid blocks with a few hundred kilograms of Haribo Goldbären gummy bear candy, the artist invents a new material for brick making, thus wall building and boundary setting. This new material is sweet and recalls childhood palate, but durable, sticky, resistant to change and hard to dismantle. The bricks represent a uniquely soft power, evident in the mass-market distribution and global ubiquity of the German candy. They paradoxically embody a powerful penetrability and accessibility that even the hardest borders cannot stop
-
A selfie that celebrated a murder incident in the no man’s land / 2019
In A selfie that celebrated a murder incident in the no man’s land (2019), Chong takes this temporal manipulation to a dysfunctional halt. Citing a video leaked online about a brutal killing of anonymous men in the open sea, the artist screen-captured 91 consecutive still frames at the end of the video, when the perpetrators celebrated the incident by taking selfies with each other. These pixelated still images are laser-etched into separate glass blocks and displayed chronologically, like a row of memorials. Cast in a material reserved for awards, achievements and anniversaries, the blocks amplify the celebratory mood of the selfie-takers, which complicates the narrative of that they are mere cold-blooded killers devoid of contexts and feelings. From his own selfie as a victim to the selfies of others as attackers, the artist turns his gaze from himself to the assailants, pitting himself against the evasion of justice, the lawlessness of international waters, and the banality of taking a selfie.
-
Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises / 2018
Some boundaries take mobile and animate forms, like the policemen who move across the urban landscape countering the movements of protesters. In Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises (2018), Chong choreographs the movement of uniformed riot police in a tortuously slow motion, imbuing their originally violent intentions with a paradoxical gentleness and beauty. These decelerated actions visualise the slow violence inflicted upon individuals by the collective power structures. This work was commissioned by M+ as part of “M+ Live Art: Audience as Performer” (2018).
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
Self Portrait: The evening when I was beaten up by a stranger with a glass bottle / I Dated a Guy in Buchenwald / 2015
Isaac Chong Wai was attacked in November 2015 on the street of Berlin, the city he lives in. A stranger started a conversation with him, but abruptly hurled racial insults and then bludgeoned his head with a glass bottle. The artist took this self-portrait as evidence of his injuries. A friend later cautioned him that “the world is not your friend.” In resistance to the definitive pessimism in his friend’s advice, the artist turns the negation into an inquisitive question. In another work based on personal experience, I Dated a Guy in Buchenwald (2013), the artist asks his date François to write about their date at the Nazi German concentration camp. The resulting text is an affirmation of the goodness and warmth of humanity, a redemptive contrast from the horror of the camp and the hate crime the artist suffered later.
-
Prison Project / 2012-2015
Incorporating works from 2013 to 2019, the ensemble can be loosely divided into four related themes: Prison, Borders, Reconciliation, and International Waters. In the Prison Project, the artist made a life-size boat out of segments of wire fences he cut out from a prison in Weimar. While the boat is made out of penetrable metal fences and is thus futile as a transportation vessel, the artist dragged it across the city of Weimar back to the prison, charting a fictional path between geographical mobility and escapist fantasy.
-
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?
-
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.