Pondering the fine line between the dramatic and the over-exaggeration in his series of silk prints Crying People (2022), Chong drops artificial tears on the faces of the people by using retrieved images captured in the state funerals in China and North Korea. He prints their excessive expressions and the animated-like tears on paper, partially veiled by a floating curtain

In the colossal funerals of totalitarian leaders, numerous people manifested patriotism through the act of mourning: weeping, wailing, screaming, and hitting the ground. Hysterical demonstrations of grievances in the funerals contagiously spread among mourners captured by international media for staging the myth making of grief, meticulously narrated by the state. Pondering the fine line between the dramatic and the over-exaggeration in his series of silk prints, Chong drops artificial tears on the faces of the mourners by using retrieved images from the internet. He prints their excessive expressions and the animated-like tears on paper, partially veiled by a floating curtain made of cable chain. The cable chains, looking like a line of teardrops, create a curtain which unveils and hides simultaneously the images, wandering between private and public.

With the technique of Serigraphy, which uses dots to create an image on paper, the texture of the print is sharped by numerous “drops” running through a screen and the light. The mix of explicit artificial tears and crying faces, being simultaneously personal and impersonal, struggles between the exhaustion of emotional labor and the emotions of the state. Since it is impossible to verify the authenticity of the tears, Chong rather takes an interest in the representations of grief and the rupture among narratives, expressions, and one’s states of mind and titles the work Crying People (2022), instead of “mourning people.”

Crying People, 2022
Isaac Chong Wai
Serigraphy on fine art paper, framed by cable chain and metal bar
56.5 x 75.5 cm (print size)  63 x 80 cm (framed) 