Cindy Cheng

Region: South

I use drawing as a means of visual research and exploration. My works rely on an additive process and are built up slowly using forms inspired by both instinctive and carefully considered marks made on the picture surface as well as images derived from memories, literary references and pop-culture. I choose images that arrest my attention by sparking possible motifs. These ideas and images are stored away, allowing the concepts to ripen, and are later re-analyzed and worked into a drawing. As my work has progressed, I find that the themes I often return to are ones of the body and its inherent struggles of communication, control and restraint, gender, transformation and sexuality.

While I do begin with a narrative, these remain nebulous and are open to being influenced, or even completely rethought, by the work's evolutions. They chart my creative process as a form of visual research, recording the continuous mobility and discovery inherent in that endeavor. Through the immediacy of image making, I can find a meaningful channel for ideas that would otherwise have remained trapped by self-consciousness or confusion.