Daniel Chong
The silence between echoes
31 January – 24 February 2024
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a product of my state. Is subtlety fear?
Is it better not to rock the boat, to live in the familiar – to hide. Or is subtlety a form of oppression? Am I living a conditioned lie? But yet I find such comfort in its language. As a gay man in conservative Asia, nuance and subtlety is a language I learned to survive. It is a lexicon that has bled into my practice in ways that I can never understand.
I wonder if subtlety is the language of the othered. In a world where so often we find success in mere speaking, literally breaking from being silenced. We often communicate in coded gestures folded between speech. Those moments, within the cracks of conversations represent those background conversations, guarded yet ongoing they exist in the silence between echoes.
The exhibition is one chapter of my ongoing exploration of subtlety and queerness. Expressed in traces, rot, and tension, it cuts across a range of materials hoping to express itself in a unified affective landscape. It invites audiences to dwell, listen and more importantly, find and hold space for these subtleties to reverberate and be heard.
Images by Ardit Hoxha