A Tally of Emotions - on ‘down to earth (exhale)’

The image I took away from the exhibition ‘down to earth (exhale)’ is the artist Chloë Cheuk standing on a cross road, one of those mammoth crossings in Tokyo where hundreds of strangers wait, their eager strides anxious for action. The artist is in awe: everyone seems to know exactly where to head. With due respect to others’ determination, she looks down at her own feet. I don’t know the artist well enough to tell what she will do next. It is probably somewhere between staying very still – in her ‘freeze mode’ – and scrambling and shouting while trying to hold onto the smallest hint that will show her the path. Or, both. 

‘down to earth’ is the 2nd edition of 1a Space’s ‘Mid-Career Artist Exhibition and Publication Series.’ It is to me a ‘survey show’ of the emotional stages the artist has experienced for choosing art as her profession, for being successful (or not depending on how one looks at it), for leaving Hong Kong to Montréal, among others. The artworks on display have been created over a time span of about a decade, between 2014 and 2025. As a label, ‘mid-career’ is loaded with ambiguity. Without the knowledge of when one’s career ends, how can one tell where the middle is? Normatively, the middle comes after the beginning and before the end. So what to expect for an artist to be at his/her ‘mid-career’ – or for any individual to be a ‘mid-career’ human? 

On entering the gallery, one can’t help but notice an orange trash bin squirting soap bubbles. As its title aptly suggests, Attention Getter (2014) arouses one’s curiosity to peep into the ‘mouth’ of the trash can, to find out that the bubbles are actually coming out from the famous bump of Crayon Shinchan, the Japanese comic figure who has been a big hit since the 1990s. Had he played a role in Cheuk’s teenage stage? I read the naughty and sneering playfulness of the artwork as a self-guard gesture of a young and upcoming artist in face of the unknown field she is now part of.   

Her gesture can be forceful too, like the literal banging of If the Moment Came (2015). One may not clearly make out what it is that bangs against the frosted glass, yet one cannot ignore the loud noise it makes even before noticing its presence. It is such an angry but feeble attempt against the unwavering piece of glass, like the strokes made by a branch in the snow in the video projected on the adjacent wall. In the name of futility, one struggles. 

Homeless (2015-2017) features a line up of coins, horizontally at eye-level, their faces reflected on the white panel on which they are affixed. Formally clean and crisp, the description of the artwork suggests twists and turns: ‘Canadian coins from the homeless people.’ Are these coins the smallest units of monetary resources that the homeless people carry on them? In what manner had they been passed on from the hands of the homeless people to that of the artist’s – assuming there had been such a moment of contact? From material to the body, from complete strangers to allies of un-possessing. I hate to think that Cheuk simply asked them for the coins, so what did she give them in return? Has this act of exchange instilled a tiny sense of belonging, in a city where home is denied to both parties? 

Cheuk made a two-channel video Waiting for Another Round in 2014, in which wheels of different vehicles came and went, uniting temporarily before quickly moving away, erasing any trace of encounter. In 2025, Cheuk created a new version featuring wheels in Montréal. These two video works stand face to face with each other in the gallery. Standing in between them, it is tempting for the viewer to imagine herself adjoining Cheuk’s then and now. What if one lets go of the idea of life as a duration, and regard these artworks as independent manifestations of the present, albeit their similarity? Will that alleviate the weight of who we once have been?   

In the case of self-doubt, blame it on the look. Everyday Ritual (2018) features two objects aligned on the same panel. At eye level is a stoneware in the form of a holy water stoup, filled with makeup foundation. Diagonally at the opposite bottom corner, a small image of a ‘mole map’, an advertisement explaining how mole positions on the face bring you fortune, love and wealth; in the case of not having one on the desired spot, make one. I am curious about the size of the advertising image. It is small in itself and proportionally small compared to the stoup. It is a flimsy piece of paper juxtaposed with a stoneware. Tugged away in a corner, it is easily missed. Both objects say, ‘Change your face and salvation is on its way.’ They compete for credibility, luring with their materiality.   

I regard Scattering Journeys (2019-2025) as a digital version of an old dictionary, worn as a result of uncountable turning of the pages by a searching hand. The artwork is made up of 12 pieces of A4 inkjet prints in a 4 x 3 grid, each a scan of an iPAD Cheuk found in a library. The reverse white images capture the fingerprints on the iPAD screen, an intricate web of human presence in the virtual web of information. Located at the back of the exhibition hall, the poetic subtlety of this artwork sends a calm note relative to the flounder and stumbles in the rest. The act (or the predicament) of ever-searching speaks to me at a level that goes beyond an artistic career. Have those fingerprints touched an answer in the end? Or, they came to the illusion of an online search – that there is an answer to everything in life? 

While its title suggests a completion, the exhibition comes across to me as a process which is yet to start. Standing on the cross road and not sure where to head, Cheuk first of all does an honest tally of her lostness, stubbornness, or even occasional self-deprecation. She may not yet have the chance to clarify how these make sense to her, yet she is ready to fit them into her suitcase, and bear their weight in the journeys to come.