International Waters, 2017
Isaac Chong Wai
Mirror, Paint, Light and Text on Paper Mänttä, Finland
361 x 151cm
The installation work of Isaac Chong Wai uncovers a map drawing of the international waters, or high seas on numbers of mirrors. The border and its surrounded zones are painted in black indicating the accumulation of the world’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Chong correlates the fluidity of water and the immobility of the sea borders–water moves while the borderlines never flow. The solid black painted on mirror stops the stream of the color and conceals the reflection of our own selves. Reflecting upon the freedom of movement, migration, trades and globalism, the artist provokes the utopian and dystopian ambiguity that the no man’s land suggests with which crime and freedom clash.