CV

Born 1991 in Taiwan and raised in Penang, Malaysia, Cindy Cheng I-Hsin makes text, performances, sculptures and installations inspired by the concept and technique of printmaking. Her works investigate her shifting surroundings, scrutinising physical and metaphorical print marks of everyday activity. Her practice concerning reflections on identity and cultural imprints pictures an alternative way of understanding humanity in which she sees human-being as print-making.

Her recent works delve into aspects of Eastern traditions, in particular the philosophy and science of ancient characters, Traditional Chinese Medicine, I-Ching, and Daoism. To introduce these classical texts of metaphorical significance and worldly images, her newfound research and visual art practice find ground in the concept of ‘shentigan’ proposed by Taiwanese scholar Yu, Shuenn-Der (The Shentigan Turn, 2016), a cultural-specific reference to the all-attentive perception emphasising on how its general translation to English as ‘bodily sensation’ excludes what is beyond the five senses, such as the concept of qi, yinyang, and more.

Developed since the pandemic, the new research angle not only allows Cheng to create new works focusing on both the literal and figurative impressions of everyday written characters but also proposes an alternative understanding of ‘creative intuition’, suggested by shentigan to be simultaneously experienced and exercised, both by the subject and the object, the creator and the creation. To the artist, her research-based visual art practice (of printmaking-inspired performative and sculptural works) serves the purpose of reflecting contemporary times as well as further contemplating what it means to be alive and human today.