Artwork+Text Essay Wall Posts Signals

Signals#25 Joey Chin

On: Repeat (2021). Calligraphy ink on calligraphy paper, 210mm x 297mm

As a writer and artist curious about communications, I have always saw what I cannot read or write as signs, or in the form of drawing, with its lines, curves, order and outlines. I feel this way about learning Greek as an adult-language learner, for instance.

With the humdrum and mundane quality of daily life under the occupation of the pandemic, the exposure to the affect of lines took unexpected paths.
I have a personal interest in Chinese ideograms and pictographs, and perhaps the dullness of daily life brought me to imagine the potential of how these signs can be made more significant to my situation, how to mine beneath the surface, and take a new spin on something old.

The work includes ancient pictograms for window, bird, wings, death, and some closer in appearance to what are used today, like cloud(云)and earth (⼟). The work imitates the pattern of a common 2.5cm by 2.5cm squared Chinese calligraphy paper, but is angled into a diamond shape instead of the typical square.

If, as a result of numerous restrictions in place due to the pandemic, everything seems to be the same – day in, day out, night on, lights off – this work takes on a wallpaper- like approach, that is certainly repetitive but, without other means at hand, gives some decoration to the monotony of my days.

Joey Chin

Born in 1986. She is an artist and a Pushcart-nominated writer and poet.

Her work is located at the intersection of text, narrative and visual art, staged through poetry, acts and modes of reading, and various disruptions.
Her key focus is in the development of personal communications between the self, markings of territoriality, and the inner conversations between the two.

Joey holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong, and her work has received scholarships, grants, and awards from numerous organisations including Arthub Asia, the Asia Europe Foundation, the Royal Over-seas League Arts (United Kingdom), the Dorothy Cheung Foundation (Singapore), the National Arts Council(Singapore), the Run Run Shaw Library (Hong Kong), and the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (US).

Website : www.joeychin.com

Source of reference and inspiration often came from pages of Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification, and Signification by Wieger, L (1965)