Isaac Chong Wai

I will be doing my residency as a Saari home residency and I will be working on a project called “Re-enactment of Dictators’ Death” investigating the memorialisation, commemorative methodologies and historiography of the death of dictators as a stigmatic historicity, while, through artistic practice, using the re-enactment as a means to remember how we shouldn’t forget for the future. The research focuses on the historical fact of how dictators have died, the relevant memorials or monuments and the reaction of the public after the decease announcement of dictators.

The home residency is a period where I would like to read and think while discussing regularly with fellow artists and stipend holders. It would be interesting to understand also how everyone works and produces artistic work. I aim at focusing on research and developing the project during the residency period.

About my working methods: I take time to read and contemplate through which my imaginations of forms, arrangements, and connections tangle and become new representations. In the development phase of the work, I tend to research in order to answer questions such as: how is it formed? If it is man-made, why do people call it natural? How the lies are constructed and what is it for? I might not be able to find an answer, but I always find the unanswered questions more interesting than questions that always have clear answers. I work on those questions and construct a conceptual framework for the art work. 

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ISAAC CHONG WAI graduated from Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University with a BA in Visual Arts and Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, with a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. He had solo exhibitions at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Zilberman, Berlin (2019); Kunstraum München, Munich (2018); Goethe Institut Hongkong, Hong Kong (2018); Bauhaus Museum, Weimar (2016). His work has been shown at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Innsbruck Biennial and IFFR, Rotterdam (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei and Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou (2019); M+ Museum and Para Site in Hong Kong (2018); Stiftung Brandenburger Tor and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2017); Deutsche Künstlerbund, Berlin and Gwangju Media Art Festival (2016); Kunstfest Weimar and Macura Museum, Serbia (2015); Moscow Biennale for Young Art in Museum of Moscow (2014). His works across a range of media, including performance, installation, painting, video, photography and multimedia. 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, geopolitics, migration, historical trauma, identity politics and public sphere. He works and lives in Berlin and Hong Kong.