TWISTED LIMBS - a solo show by Sophie Hing Yee Chueng

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4 - 15 December 2024
Omnibus Theatre Café Bar • 1 Clapham Common North Side, London SW4 0QW

8 - 15 December 2024
MLSAR Residency Home • Flat 1, 36 The Chase, London SW4 0NH

↘︎ CNTRFLD.ART x Sophie Hing Yee Ching Q&A
Twisted Limbs: Sophie Hing Yee Cheung on Art, Activism, and In-Betweenness

Hong Kong-based artist Sophie Hing Yee Cheung spent the summer of 2024 in Clapham, South London, overlooking Clapham Common, to take up the MLS Artist Residency. The output from Cheung’s residency will be presented and celebrated in a solo show TWISTED LIMBS across two venues, where she lived, at the MLSAR Residency Home, and at the Omnibus Theatre Café Bar, also on Clapham Common. 

Visitors are advised to see both venues for a holistic understanding. At the MLSAR Residency Home, there will be an intimate look into the artist’s daily life in residency, and at the Omnibus Theatre, each visitor will be invited to take part in the artist’s future creative process, with visitors invited to bring erasers or tiny plastic objects for use in future artworks and workshops.

Clapham served as a major inspiration for the artist, whose artworks became deeply intertwined with her discoveries in the neighbourhood. A spirit of engagement with the local community is a core value for Schoeni Projects and the artist: in December, there will be an active programme of events, including an opening event, weekends workshop, and daily guided tour to Clapham Common.

The title of TWISTED LIMBS stems from Cheung’s assertion that dignity must be the central tenet of human interactions. During her residency she was struck by the tree stumps which she found across Clapham Common, and began to see manifold meaning in their form. The “peaceful violence” they represented, the dichotomy of their morbid state and the shelter of life they gave, the passage of time documented in their unique shape, all fed into her creative process. The stumps’ monumentality became a haven of memory and mourning: whilst in London, the artist lost friends and mentors to unrelated illnesses, including her mentor and fellow equality advocate Graham Dowdall, lecturer at Goldsmiths College, with whom she collaborated during her MA in Anthropology and Community Art between 2020 and 2022.

For Cheung, plasticity is an aspirational characteristic, informing both her understanding of human nature and her navigation of new artistic possibilities. Her passion for the process of evolving, of immersing the past into the present, and of embracing frailty may be understood in the context of her own lived experiences with mental health diagnosis, treatment and advocacy. The artist focuses on various concepts related to dignity. She believes that dignity pertains to evolving into an original and organic form, while also adapting to climate variations, social intervention, and the laws of nature. She thereby explores how humans can truly affirm subjectivity and become a whole person.

↘︎ Press Release