Enoch CHEUNG

 Enoch CHEUNG is a multi-disciplinary artist, with an interest in the reconstruction of the photographic image and the creative intersections between curatorship, media and artistic practice. Cheung obtained his BA and MFA. (Painting) from the RMIT University, Australia, and his MFA (Interactive Media and Environment) from Frank Mohr Institute of Hanze University, the Netherlands; and an MA (Fine Art) from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Solo exhibitions of his projects include Digital All (2001, Para/site, Hong Kong), Collective Memorabilia (2007, Too Art Gallery, Hong Kong) and Secret Dialogue: Half a second (2011, Lumenvisum, Hong Kong). Group exhibitions include Move on Asia: Video Art in Asia 2002-2012 organized by Gallery LOOP which showed in Europe at ZKM and other arts institutes; Pseudo Writing (Burger Collection and 1a Space, Hong Kong); Breathing Space: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong (Asia Society HK, 2017); and City Flaneur: Social Documentary Photography (Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 2010) among others.

 Enoch Cheung Artist’s Statement:
My works relate to the Occupy Central of citizens’ protests in 2014, more popularly known as the “Umbrella Movement.”. During that time, I collected online comments (in Chinese) posted by the different campaigns of the two sides:  the protest groups known as the “yellow ribbons” and the anti-protest groups identified as the “blue ribbons.”  Appropriating iconic images from the news and social media during the Umbrella Movement I made prints and used silkscreen technique to overlayer them with fragments of these oppositional messages, creating images of an ideological and factual clash, which is still occurring today.

(Note: In Enoch Cheung’s works the artist has appropriated iconic media images of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests calling for universal suffrage. These images were taken from newspapers and magazines at the time, including TIME Magazine’s cover photo of young Hong Kong pro-democracy leader Joshua Wong (TIME’s Cover); and of a notorious video capture of police beating an unarmed protestor (The Dark Corner). Four years later, in July 2020, the Chinese government imposed the “National Security Law” on Hong Kong, giving sweeping powers to the authorities to crush voices of dissent. Among the many arrested and recently jailed in the aftermath was 24-year-old Joshua Wong.)