Cindy Leung is an artist who was born and raised in Hong Kong, currently residing in Gainesville, FL. She calls many places home. Home is a borrowed place on borrowed time for her. Her work focuses on the complex relationship between consumerism, colonization, and cultural hybridity. By making materially hybrid objects out of poppy seeds and Chinese exports– silk, tea, and porcelain, she sees her work as a way to create a visual manifestation of the hybridity in her culture and languages.
Leung holds an MFA in Ceramics from University of Florida and a BFA from Queens College, City University of New York. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in China, California, Washington, New York, Florida, and Louisiana. Her current solo exhibition is at Pensacola Museum of Art (FL). Leung’s upcoming solo exhibition will be at Gallery 456 in New York.
Visit Cindy Leung’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
A Borrowed Place on Borrowed Time, 2021-2022
I use Chinese exports – silk, tea and porcelain primarily in my work to address the complex relationship between consumerism, colonization and cultural hybridity, as they originated in the East and were popularized in the West through trading and colonization. I consider these materials being a part of my identity, given that I was born and raised in Hong Kong. The composition of the work is generated from a Chinese input method called Sucheng, in which each Chinese character is paired with an alphabet, to address the idea of code-switching. The interaction of the materials carries out actions; and I use these actions along with the materials as symbols to represent the interactions between the two languages/cultures. By making 26 materially hybrid objects with these specific materials and in the Sucheng system, I see my work as a way to create a visual manifestation of the hybridity in my identity and in my language.
