Astrid Chung
陶
[as art director/designer/researcher]
design
for community
Visuals for UK-based HK-diaspora sound artist TIN WING’s ‘mai dan lao’
Sound artist TIN WING is a third-generation Hong Kong diaspora in the UK who explores their complex inherited cultural heritage and third-culture syndrome through sound. 'mai dan lao' remixes recordings of TIN WING"s family members speaking English-loan words in Cantonese, in this case "McDonald's".
Visuals made by artist Astrid Chung, using found footage of vintage Hong Kong McDonald's adverts from the '90s and 2000s. The overwhelming visual language mirrors the complexity of TIN WING’s relationship to their culture, the confusion of a language barrier, and the inheritance of a cultural identity defined by generations-old aesthetic markers - an “out-of-date” diasporic connection to a homeland.
_____, in excess.
(2022 winner of Supra Systems Studio ‘Future of Money’ design competition)
‘ , in excess.’ is a nomadic guerrilla exhibition of artefacts, technology, and artworks that present an alternative philosophy of consumption and exchange through the critique of capitalism and its foundations in imperialism, racism, classism, and ultimately control.
The objects on display graph how the profit-motivated actions of human beings in the past have constructed the inequality of the capitalist present, and emphasise how our present individual actions will inevitably shape the collective future. We suggest a new (old) re-complicated, multi-definition of value: the complex and intangible feelings, memories, and human connections that make life worth living. This community-centred perspective serves as antithesis to the inaccessible and reductionist capitalist definition of value that constructs and maintains inequality through emphasis on scarcity and uniformity.
The exhibition culminates in an 3D holographic topographical map depicting worldwide wealth inequality and its often-overlooked consequences (health, education, happiness, etc.) over the span of time to present day. This method of data visualisation (as opposed to the purposely static and unapproachable visual language of financial statistics) maps how many inequalities of today are constructed on capitalist foundations erected by human beings of the past.
(2022 winner of Supra Systems Studio ‘Future of Money’ design competition)
‘ , in excess.’ is a nomadic guerrilla exhibition of artefacts, technology, and artworks that present an alternative philosophy of consumption and exchange through the critique of capitalism and its foundations in imperialism, racism, classism, and ultimately control.
The objects on display graph how the profit-motivated actions of human beings in the past have constructed the inequality of the capitalist present, and emphasise how our present individual actions will inevitably shape the collective future. We suggest a new (old) re-complicated, multi-definition of value: the complex and intangible feelings, memories, and human connections that make life worth living. This community-centred perspective serves as antithesis to the inaccessible and reductionist capitalist definition of value that constructs and maintains inequality through emphasis on scarcity and uniformity.
The exhibition culminates in an 3D holographic topographical map depicting worldwide wealth inequality and its often-overlooked consequences (health, education, happiness, etc.) over the span of time to present day. This method of data visualisation (as opposed to the purposely static and unapproachable visual language of financial statistics) maps how many inequalities of today are constructed on capitalist foundations erected by human beings of the past.
NOT LEFT, NOT RIGHT, BUT FORWARD (AND ALL TOGETHER)
(On display at the 2023 Contextual and Theoretical Design exhibition at University of the Arts London: London College of Communication)
Tongue-in-cheek political leaflets that demand more from western leftists than simply latching onto superficial ethnocentric political labels rooted in binary polarization; to instead deeply investigate and enact their beliefs, and take genuine effective humanist action towards global justice. Designed as the visual accompaniment to a dissertation titled ‘Authentic Artist & Design Activism: Moving beyond the Eurocentric left-right political binary and towards multiplural humanist global justice’.
Inspired by punk posters and protest zines core to the cultural canon of London’s punk history - co-opting established visual languages to effectively disseminate information to targeted demographic groups in a visual language familiar to the western leftist eye.
The leaflets are designed to be easily reproduced and disseminated: to be handed out on streets, uni entrances, wheatpasted on public walls and lampposts, thrown in a pile next to tube exits and zebra crossings; airdropped on public transport, at gigs, at pubs, whilst waiting for the green man at the crossing, whilst passing a café full of self-righteous upper-middle class white people, etc. All done with a bit of humour in order to invoke real change in beliefs, labels, and action whilst simultaneously avoiding the triggering of as little psychological push-back and paralysing white guilt as much as possible.
(On display at the 2023 Contextual and Theoretical Design exhibition at University of the Arts London: London College of Communication)
Tongue-in-cheek political leaflets that demand more from western leftists than simply latching onto superficial ethnocentric political labels rooted in binary polarization; to instead deeply investigate and enact their beliefs, and take genuine effective humanist action towards global justice. Designed as the visual accompaniment to a dissertation titled ‘Authentic Artist & Design Activism: Moving beyond the Eurocentric left-right political binary and towards multiplural humanist global justice’.
Inspired by punk posters and protest zines core to the cultural canon of London’s punk history - co-opting established visual languages to effectively disseminate information to targeted demographic groups in a visual language familiar to the western leftist eye.
The leaflets are designed to be easily reproduced and disseminated: to be handed out on streets, uni entrances, wheatpasted on public walls and lampposts, thrown in a pile next to tube exits and zebra crossings; airdropped on public transport, at gigs, at pubs, whilst waiting for the green man at the crossing, whilst passing a café full of self-righteous upper-middle class white people, etc. All done with a bit of humour in order to invoke real change in beliefs, labels, and action whilst simultaneously avoiding the triggering of as little psychological push-back and paralysing white guilt as much as possible.
Home:Cooked
Generational recipes for comfort and community
Lithographic short-run print of a Chinese-restaurant-style menu of diasporic recipes and each dishes’ contextual cultural significance. Depicts the culturally-significant beauty of food as symbols of the diasporic experience of globalisation, immigration, and integration.
Generational recipes for comfort and community
Lithographic short-run print of a Chinese-restaurant-style menu of diasporic recipes and each dishes’ contextual cultural significance. Depicts the culturally-significant beauty of food as symbols of the diasporic experience of globalisation, immigration, and integration.
(Re)Union: Making Home
Return Home Chequers
Community-building event around a print-your-own question card game remiscent of the traditional Hong Kong board game “Flying Chequers”, to aid the process of relocation to the UK for new immigrants and diaspora from Hong Kong.
Return Home Chequers
Community-building event around a print-your-own question card game remiscent of the traditional Hong Kong board game “Flying Chequers”, to aid the process of relocation to the UK for new immigrants and diaspora from Hong Kong.
hypernatural: growth & decay
Visual essay translating the urgent conversations and underlying themes within the Michel Serres essay ‘The Natural Contract’ into exaggerated over-edited images that explore the impact of human involvement on the bidirectional nature of growth and decay.
Visual essay translating the urgent conversations and underlying themes within the Michel Serres essay ‘The Natural Contract’ into exaggerated over-edited images that explore the impact of human involvement on the bidirectional nature of growth and decay.
disillusionment/&delirium
A documentative moving image exploration of the isolating and disillusioning experience of living with chronic illness during Coronavirus lockdowns, set to the rhythmic clicking of knitting needles.
A documentative moving image exploration of the isolating and disillusioning experience of living with chronic illness during Coronavirus lockdowns, set to the rhythmic clicking of knitting needles.
NEUTRALITY IS AN ILLUSION
Short film encouraging youth to question their beliefs and take sides in sociopolitical debates rather than remaining “neutral”, as neutrality=silence, which has real-life consequences.
Short film encouraging youth to question their beliefs and take sides in sociopolitical debates rather than remaining “neutral”, as neutrality=silence, which has real-life consequences.
Astrid Chung
陶
[as artist/workshop facilitator/human being]
handicraft
as heritage
OBJECTS HAVE MEANING! was a series of 20 accessible ceramics workshops held over the course of a month that encouraged locals to tell their story through hand-building with clay. Hosted at The Koppel Project Station in Hampstead during the artist’s residency as part of The Koppel Project’s 2023 Open Cells programme.
Participants were asked to bring five random objects with them, which would serve as the springboard for our conversation and also for making their own objects with clay. The workshops aimed to facilitate both human connection (between themselves and the artist, as well as any other participants), and also connection to the natural and traditional medium of pottery, which, as seen in archeology, has told the story of humans since the beginning of society. Workshop participants simultaneously experienced the catharsis of making with their hands (psychologically proven to soothe) and of genuine, authentic connection in an age of lonlieness and disconnection to body, community, and nature.
The handmade pottery pieces imbued with the participants’ stories were then arranged into personal shrines, surrounded by the objects they had brought with them and connected with red thread to the artist’s correspondent ceramic object made during their conversation - the Red Thread of Fate a mythical Chinese symbol of destiny and connection.
1) Artist-made poster advertising the OBJECTS HAVE MEANING workshops
2) A selection of ceramic objects made by the artist during the residency, in response to workshop participant’s stories
3) Pictures taken during the course of the artist residency - of a participant’s shrine and hand-built ceramic objects, the table at which the conversations and making took place, another shrine with accompanying objects, and another shrineconnected to the artist’s ceramic objects with red thread
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A collection, documentation, archive, and mapping of objects and vessels symbolic of heritage. Held in and expressed through a variety of handicraft media, the sensoral tangibility of emotion, memory, culture, inheritance, and perspective is brought to life.
Analogue handicraft techniques that have told stories of humankind since the beginning of the anthropocene: knitting, sewing, tattooing, ceramics, etc. have shaped our understanding of human history by delicately balancing form & function through material objects.
RESTING PLACE is a shrine to the personal, transitional, and visceral nature of home and heritage: a collection of sentimental objects encapsulates the forever-fluid flow between death and reincarnation.
The historically-resonant, culturally-rich, and sensorially-meditative process of making handicrafts (pottery, knitting, and sewing) symbolise the severance from intergenerational traumas of colonialism, poverty, guilt, and pain; and the discovery of newfound possibilities for rest, hope, peace, and joy. Arranged into an archaeological grave, the material objects and accompanying film are imbued with the intangible feelings and memories that make up the artist’s cultural identity and human presence; revealing an ethnographic creative process that rejects ancestral shame and embraces innate trust in time and the universe.
