Kates-Ferri Projects is pleased to announce the gallery’s first solo show, LORE, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Cecile Chong. Born in 1960s Ecuador to Chinese parents, Chong grew up in Quito and Macau and studied in New York City. In her newest series, Chong uses Eastern and Western figures from vintage children’s books and found images to create a cross-cultural mythology, relinquishing narrative control inviting viewers to reinterpret the invented stories as their own. Culture is the stories people tell, and Chong’s work celebrates the commonality of the human experience in an increasingly divided world.

In the exhibition’s centerpiece diptych, Parenting Tips (in blue), figures float between thirty layers of hazy encaustic, representing the depths and melding of cultures, identity, and collective memory. The rich ultramarine tones recall Chinese blue and white pottery, made possible through the 14th-century trade of Persian cobalt pigment, and later appropriated in Dutch Delftware. Chong underscores the world's interconnected energy through layers of diverse materials from her home and travel, including pigments from Morocco and India, delicate Asian paper, volcanic ash from Ecuador, metallic leaf, donated beads from necklaces and rosaries, talismans, and circuit board components. Storytelling since the ancient Ur-narrative has broken through class divides by translating stories to non-native speakers or readers. Many of the artist’s stories were passed through her grandmother Carmen, who didn’t read or write but captivated Chong’s imagination through oral history, storytelling, and visuals descriptions. Miniaturized versions of Chong’s swaddled guagua (Quechua for baby) are nestled in the painting’s trees, resembling small fruits ready for harvest and continue in the exhibition as plaster and encaustic sculptures. Chong’s Straingers series of hand-beaded, mask-like sculptures is a play-on-words between “strangers” and “strainers.” The strainer suggests the act of separation, liquid from solid, interior from exterior, insider from outsider, and the exotic from the mundane. The works feature an image of a guagua created with beads, repurposed accessories, and woven with natural materials from Ecuador such as tagua, acai, pambil, and seeds from the Amazon. The face of the guagua is left unbeaded, revealing a mirror where the viewer’s own “strained” reflection becomes part of the piece.

About the Artist: Cecile Chong is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation and layering materials, identities, histories, and languages. She received an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design, an MA in Education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College. Chong’s public art installation EL DORADO - The New Forty Niners has been installed in New York City’s five boroughs and is currently at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza adjacent to the United Nations. She has had solo exhibitions at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, Selenas Mountain, ICFAC at Pinta Miami, Smack Mellon, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Five Myles Plus Space, Selena Gallery, BRIC House, Emerson Gallery Berlin, Honey Ramka Project Space, Figureworks, Praxis, Corridor Gallery and ArtSPACE. Chong has been awarded fellowships and residencies including the New York State Council on the Arts, LMCC Creative Engagement, Urban Field Station, Hispanic Society Artist Research Fellowship, Block Gallery/AIM Artist Hub, BRIC Media Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, Wave Hill Winter Workspace, the Lower East Side Printshop, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, The Center for Book Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, AIM Bronx Museum, Urban Artist Initiative NYC, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant.

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