Celine Cheung, 7 Minutes in Heaven (concept preview), 2024 Photography by Nolan Ho Wung Murphy @nolanmchly
Affection can mean feelings of fondness or acts of tenderness when one cares for someone; or it can be a disease, a malady. // Self-disclosure can be a double-edged sword. It draws people closer, yet too much knowledge has the potential to drive others away.
Presupposing one cannot fully know themselves in isolation, relationships become a mirror that reveal different angles of the self and our personal histories. At once, we are shaped by encounters and capable of imprinting on other people’s lives.
In Affection, Celine Cheung presents a candid self-examination touching on a spectrum of intimate experiences that are interconnected. The show features performances conceived and documented over the first 6 years of her practice alongside new works, contextualising them within a continuum where past and present selves meet. Affection treads through shades of grey in interpersonal relationships — implicating strangers and lovers alike. Inviting the audience to come into relation with the artist, this configuration of artworks interrogates ways of seeing and critically positions identity as a departure point to interrelations.
Affection brings together artworks that explore ideas of obsession and objectification; fantasy and culpability; sentimentality and subjectivity. The suite of works sees to her inhabiting different roles as victim and violator, to invoke discussions of power, agency and gender dynamics. Ever-present is an awareness of the gaze, paralleled with a relentless desire to self- dissect. Does reflection lend itself to lessons? Embracing the spirit of “do it for the plot”, the exhibition is part confessional, part narrative, as the artist negotiates between vulnerability and a refusal to be completely known.