About:
Cindy Ng Sio Ieng was born in Macau and raised in Macau and Hong Kong. A period of study in London in the early 1990s proved especially fruitful. On the recommendation of Bartolomeu dos Santos at the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, she studied the ancient Chinese paintings in the British Museum’s Chinese Painting Study Room. In 1996, she moved to Taipei to continue her studies in contemporary ink painting and she held a solo exhibition at the Taipei Fine Art Museum. She has lived and worked in Beijing since 2008.
For many years, she has attempted to liberate ink from its subservience to the brush and its long-standing purpose as vehicle for text and images. She ends the established and almost indivisible partnership between the ink and the brush, bringing ink to video, photography, paper, and oil painting.
She has even experimented with new media, including interactive technologies. Her ink works cross regions and media, revealing the unique essence of ink. She has begun to make public art works for hospitals in recent years. The works play the role of softening the cold medical environment, comforting patients and their families, exerting artistic appeal and adding warmth to the hospital, thus starting the research of the healing of art.
Major solo exhibitions:
2023 “Go with the Time”Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, TanKo Art Museum, Beijing
2018 “Spring tide” Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, Chi Ni Gallery, Taipei
2017 “Flowing Light Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, Riverside Art Museum, Beijing
2015 “So Far, So Close Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, Orient Foundation Museum, Portugal
2015 “Inkality Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong
2014 Works by Cindy Ng Sio Ieng, Solo Exhibition, The Exhibition Hall of the UNESCO Centre, Macau
2013 “Ink-formation Cindy Ng Solo Exhibition”, Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong
2007 “Ink in Motion Shadow”, Today Art Museum, Beijing
2007 “Ink in Motion”, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle
2005 “Peace”, Ju Ming Museum, Taiwan
2004 “Sounds of Silence”, Amerasia Bank Gallery, New York
2004 “Sounds of Silence”, The Taipa Houses - Museum, Macau 1996 “Traveling”, Taipei Fine
Selected group exhibitions:
2023 “Digital Paradise”, Digital Art Exhibition, Sanya
2022-2020 “Wild Imagination-Contemporary Ink Art in Guangdong-HongKong-Macao”, Macao Museum of Art and Guangdong Museum of Art.
2022 “Finding Season”, Macau City Fringe Festival, Macau
2021 NFT Art Week, Beijing, ShenZhen
2021 “The Mountains of the Endness-Chinese Ink Yearbook Exhibition”, An Art Museum, Beijing
2021 “Yi Tai Sculpture & Installtion Projects, Art Central, Hong Kong
2021 “Multi-prismatic Mutial Views: International Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Macao museum of art.
2020 “Wild Imagination-Contempory Ink Art in Guangdong-HongKong-Macao”Guangdong museum of art.
2020 “ARTFEM2020“ARTFEM Women Artists International Biennial of Macau”
2018 “Amplified” Juri Markkula and Cindy Ng exhibition, Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong
2018 “Art is play”exhibition, MGM Hotel, Macau
2018 “Virtual” Beijing Hong Kong Macau# ink new media, Yan Huang Art Museum, Beijing
2017 “Luminous Shadows” Ink studio, Beijing
2016 “Futuristic Ink” , Liang Yi Museum, Hong Kong 2015 “Calligraphic Time and Space” Abstract Art in China, Power Station of Art, Shanghai
2015 “Emptiness: The Dialogue of Landscape” Contemporary Ink Art Exhibition, Ming Yuan Art Museum, Shanghai
2015-2016 “Ink Remix” Contemporary Art from Mainland China, Taiwan and HK Canberra Museum and Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, University of NSW Gallerie, Sydney and the Museum of Brisbane, Australia
2015 “Spirit-Resonance” A New World of Ink Painting Exhibition, Robin Gallery, New York
2015 “Silent Poetry” Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, China Cultural Centre, Sydney and Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide
2014 Chinese Contemporary Youth Ink Yearbook Exhibition, Beijing
2014 The 3rd Documentary Exhibition of Fine Arts, Hu Bei Museum of Art
2014 Macau Artists Exhibition, National Museum of China, Beijing
2012 “Dream Flowers” Exhibition, Red Zone Gallery, Switzerland
2012 Mixed Media Exhibition, Austin Tung Gallery, Australia
2011 “Tao of Nature” Chinese Abstract Art Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai
2011 Cao Chang Di Photo Spring: Arles in Beijing, Beijing
2010 “Time Unfrozen” New Media Art Exhibition, Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan
2010 “Flower of Chaos” Video Art Exhibition, Video Art Verona, Italy
2010 “Making Waves“ Contemporary Art Exhibition，The 6th Chinese Character Festival, Taiwan
2008 GrünDerZeit - Landschaftsarchitektur in und aus Peking, Institute of cultural foreign relations, Germany
2007 Videonale 11, Festival for Contemporary Video Art, Germany
2007 The 3rd Chengdu Biennial, Chengdu
2006 The 5th International Ink Painting Biennial of Shenzhen, Guan Shan Yue Museum of Art, Shenzhen
2006 “Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity” The 1st envisage, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai
2005 “Unseen History” Art of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan
2005 “Macao Image” Daejeon Fast, Daejeon
Awards：
2014 Artist in Residence, Covela Wine project, Portugal
2006 The 10th Media Arts Festival Jury Recommended Work, Japan
2006 Artist in Residence, Grass Maintain Chateau, Taiwan
2005 The 10th “V-art” International Video-Art Festival Selected Finalist, Italy
2005 The 2nd Audiovisual festival B&W Selected Work-Experimental Video, Portugal
2004 The 3rd Runner-up in The 18th Art Competition The 2nd Runner-up in painting Philippe Charriol Foundation, HK
Collections:
Today Art Museum, Beijing
Hu Bei Museum of Art
Guan Shan Yue Museum of Art, Shenzhen
Macao Art Museum, Macao
Taiwan Museum of Art, Taiwan
New Taipei City Hospital, San Chong Branch, Taiwan
Fongshan Railway Station, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Cathay Pacific lounge Tao Yuan International Airport, Taiwan
Cathy Pacific lounge, Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong
Bank of China, Hong KongN
Da Dong, Time Square, New York City
Peninsula Hotel, Paris
Kerry Centre Hotel, Beijing
The Sukhothai Hotel, Shanghai
China Europe International Business School, Shanghai
Louis Vuitton, Shanghai
Grand Kempinski Hotel, Shanghai
Four Seasons Hotel Pu Dong, Shanghai
Intercontinental Hotel, Suzhou
Shen Zhen Xitou Metro Station
The Many Lives of Ink and Paper: Reflections on Cindy Ng Sio Ieng’s Artistic Practice
Although ink painting on xuan paper has existed in China since the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), it was during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 A.D.) that the genre reached its height. The medium has since become a leitmotif of traditional Chinese art and a genre painstakingly explored and constantly referenced by many artists over the centuries. Because of its philosophical and aesthetic implications and despite the theoretical disputes that have animated Chinese cultural circles over the past few decades, Chinese ink painting (shuimohua) has always been revered and cherished, but seldom considered part of the contemporary art world, not simply because of the new iconographic references it has accumulated, but also because of its semantic implications. The discussion of ink on paper has often been limited to the formal realm, instead of embracing the conceptual one. Cindy (Born in Macau, lives and works in Beijing) has contributed a rich and varied body of work to the genre, widening and updating the dialogue about this medium. In a daring yet visually compelling way, she revives this respected mode of expression, bridging the gap between tradition and contemporaneity and between aesthetic and conceptual needs. By doing so, she has breathed new life into a medium that might otherwise be considered ossified or traditional.
Cindy has been carrying out a silent revolution. She was educated in Macau, where she became familiar with etching, but she is artistically self- trained and nurtured by her travels around the world. A period of study in London in the early 1990s proved especially fruitful, as she was exposed to the wonderful ancient Chinese art collection at the study room of the British Museum. In her oeuvre, ink and paper are not simply eternal, sacred tools of tradition; they have become both the signified and signified of the dialogue between the work, the artist, and the contemporary world she inhabits. In her hands, the classic black and white of ink on paper is complemented with a varied palette, including shades of gray, green, yellow, blue, and violet, delicately mixed in a subtle yet unexpected way to create abstract forms and landscapes of the mind, where filled and empty spaces produce a strong visual tension and a specific rhythm that dominates the composition. It is no chance occurrence that these mind-scapes are totally devoid of any human presence and show no relation to a process of pure mimesis. These forms flow from the beauty of the ink, which is not just a tool, but a real protagonist; ink’s specific yet variable texture, once placed on paper, (as the artist has been doing since the early 1990s), can convey a whole array of feelings, ranging from calm to uncertainty, from loneliness to contentment. Spontaneous changes in the ink seem to occur voluntarily on the chosen surfaces, but they are also controlled in such a subtle way that they perfectly echo the artist’s mental state. The viewer fully grasps the meditative mood of these pieces, which aim to evoke rather than represent. As a result, the viewer is invited to transform himself from peripheral onlooker to active participant by metaphorically stepping into these landscapes, getting lost within them, in order to redefine his own relationship with nature and the cosmos and come to a new appreciation of the ancient precept of supreme harmony, Tian Ren He Yi(the unity of man and nature). The artist’s simple, neat scenes may be a reaction to the cacophony of the outside world, becoming a refuge for the soul of both the artist and the viewer and offering visual and mental comfort.
However, Cindy is far from surrendering to mere aestheticism; the various natural changes in the ink do not merely represent a safe aesthetic fascination; they also stand for a highly conceptual innovation. In her most daring pieces, the high and the low, the orthodox and the unorthodox, the natural and the artificial co-exist and influence one another, producing unexpected visual twists and turns that nevertheless create highly poetic and pensive compositions. The artist sometimes mixes ink with milk, coffee, and soy sauce and the effects of such unusual encounters are registered on various surfaces. The support chosen, whether xuan paper, canvas, photograph, or even video, is not a mere backdrop, but the active recipient of a dialogue between materials and media, the visual proof that the artist believes ink to be not a static value inherited from tradition, but a dynamic force able to open up new possibilities and unexpected routes .
Manuela Lietti Art critic and curator(Italy)
Giclee print
The photographic work is improvised on a glass plate and sprinkled with various water and oily materials. These richly colored works on glass produce images resembling landscapes. She then shot the images with a camera and had them returned to the glass with a Giclee print, preserving that fleeting beauty for eternity.
Fongshan Galaxy 800x800x300cm Giclee print on glass light box Fongshan Railway Station Taiwan
Video
Using video to capture the dynamic ink, allows it to show the natural flowing energy and artistic conception. The ink flowing in the video is soft and uninterrupted, allowing the viewer to hold their breath, waiting for the final move to a natural mood. the slow inflow of the liquid, showing the mutual integration and harmony, showing the complementation and dependence of the Yin and Yang universe in Chinese philosophy.
The 24 Solar Terms 8' video National Taiwan University Hospital, Hsinchu, Taiwan 2020
A Time Art Team
2019, Cindy brought ink art creation into the field of digital media whilst still retaining the profound roots of traditional ink art. She opened up a new horizon that fuses science with ink art and computer language to discover the profound logic behind ink art, and perfectly interpret traditional ink art through contemporary thinking and modern media. To this end, Cindy, computer engineer Edward Jiang, and art director Feng Yan set up a new media art team, dedicated to exploring the great possibilities of ink art in digital media.
Based on the “Navier-Stokes equations" (one of the most complex mathematical formulas that have plagued mankind in 200 years), chaos theory, and intricate underlying logic codes, which transform the ink creations into a program. The new artistic conception created by these processes and programs brings a sense of familiarity but also a strangeness of the future. The work collects the subtle changes in real-time weather data of a region to affect the flow of the picture (for example temperature affects the color of the picture, wind strength and direction affect the dynamics of the picture), and the changing picture triggers the serendipitous combination of sounds to form an infinitely dynamic ink art that is generated in real time. Different from ink art in the physical world, the body of the ink art is completely extracted and decoded autonomously in the program where time is stretched infinitely, presenting a flow of ink in a digital field of vision.
This forces us to rethink the creation of ink art, is real ink necessary? Millions of particles are constantly being impacted, whirled around and pulled at, and the seemingly aimless scenes are actually a series of in-depth logical calculations. Much like the connection of everything in the universe, we are always trying to find the logic behind it. And this may be the future of abstract ink art.
Performance/Art project
Multimedia Ink Dance Theater "Beyond tiME" was jointly conceived by Lao Cho Wa Chloe, director of Ieng Chi Dance Association, ink artist Cindy, and Lighting Designer Calvin Lam. Driven by a seed planted over a decade ago when they first met in the team of Playing Landscape, a performance tour they reminisced about from time to time. Over these years,They have continued their own artistic pursuits in theater, visual arts, and dance, and trodden their own paths of ups and downs like three parallel lines, until they would meet again at some magical intersections and leave subtle traces in one anther’s life trajectories.In 2023, Beyond time brings us together again to contemplate everything about “time, space and thoughts”. Thanks interview by https://www.tdm.com.mo/zh-hant/sharelink/program-video-playlist/462580?s=pc
Playing Landscape Performance
Ink on canvas
In 2003 , Cindy move dher experiments with ink from paper to canvas. When rice paper absorbs ink, the gloss of the ink disappears into the fiber of the paper. Ink on paper showcases the ink beneath the paper, whereas ink on canvas retains its luster, allowing the ink to more effectively present a form in space. In recent years, she has easily and skillfully expressed the natural variations of ink and the arrangement of forms and voids, as well as the difficulty of presenting a continuous rhythm of ink on canvas. In round or oval paintings, the naturally flowing ink seems to change form almost at will.
ink97 150cm Ink on canvas
Ink on paper
Cindy has always explored the possibilities of ink through different media and environments, but she always returns to paper, the earliest support for ink. She gives these works unique mountings, increases the solidity and three-dimensionality of the ink, and adds colors; the blending of azure, malachite, and indigo into the ink is barely discernible, but it adds a visual richness that completes and refines the mood conveyed in the painting.
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Ink65 96x180cm Ink acrylic on paper
AR work
The interactive work "Spirit" was made in 2014, by applying the ink video to the augmented reality technology. After repeated communication and testing, the ultimate realization of works could be viewed virtually on the mobile terminal platform (iphone, ipad) which ink art will extend to the social media.
Spirit 1' AR
Light installation
In the ancient Chinese understanding of physics, light was seen as intangible qi, or vital energy. During the Spring and Autumn Periods, Yi He noted, “Heaven has six vital energies… The six vital energies are yin, yang, wind, rain, darkness, and brightness.” In traditional painting theory, there are few descriptions of light, but Xie He vividly described this energy. Flowing Light uses the structure of light and shadow to subvert the conventions of ink. Cindy attempted to bring ink back to its point of origin, sometimes even painstakingly hiding the ink component and directly using light and shadow to present the essence of traditional Chinese painting. She wants viewers to feel the inky mood created by light and shadow in an open space.
Mindscapes glass bottle, turntable, spotlight, projector “Art is play”exhibition, MGM Hotel, Macau 2018
Light 01 metal plate、turntable、spotlight 2018
Light 02 glass bottle、turntable、spotlight
“Flowing Light”Solo Exhibition Riverside Art Museum，Beijing，2017
“So Far, So Close”Solo Exhibition”, Orient Foundation Museum, Portugal
“Ink in Motion Shadow”Solo Exhibition Today Art Museum, Beijing 2007
“Ink in Motion”Solo Exhibition Seattle Art Museum, Seattle 2007