Cecile Chong

Provenance: Courtesy of the Artist

Chong is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and video in which she layers material, identities, histories and languages. Her work addresses ideas of culture interaction and interpretation, as well as the commonalities humans share both in our relationship to nature and to each other. Inspired by materials as signifiers, she’s interested in how we acquire and share culture, and how world cultures now overlap and interact in ways previously inconceivable. With uncertainty looming in everything from our economies to our weather patterns, she’s concerned with the fragility of our civilization despite the universality of its cultural underpinnings. In her work she’s been looking at traditional artifacts and wondering what tangible relics we may leave for future generations and what they may say about who we were and how we lived

Born in Ecuador to Chinese parents, Chong lives and works in New York. Her solo exhibitions have been presented at Smack Mellon, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Selena Gallery, BRIC House, Emerson Gallery Berlin, Honey Ramka, Figureworks, Praxis New York, Rush Corridor Gallery and ArtSPACE. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio, Nevada Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Hunterdon Museum, CUE Art Foundation, Wave Hill, Sue Scott Gallery in New York, and Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London. Chong has received numerous fellowships and residencies, including The 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 Emerging Artist Fellowship, Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) at the Bronx Museum, Urban Artist Initiative NYC, and Aljira Emerge. Her public art installation EL DORADO – The New Forty Niners has been installed in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. Chong earned 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. Cecile is currently part of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program.