Award-winning Singapore multidisciplinary fine artist Sarah Choo seems to have a special ability to see beyond the surface of things. For the series of work presented in her latest solo exhibition – titled Flights of the Mind – at Art Projects Gallery in Hong Kong, Choo’s inspiration came from an unlikely source – Hong Kong’s public transportation, in the forms of the electric trams and the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) that serves millions of passengers each day. It is from this public realm of daily commute, with its immense volume and flow of people and (non)encounters that provided the fertile grounds for Choo’s creative explorations. Working with photography and video and digital media, Choo alters the dimensions of time and space in her images. Her mesmerizing works cast new light onto common scenes of daily life turning them into imageries of ethereal beauty that evoke deeper reflections.

“Over time, you begin to construct a mental map, a collection of favored destinations and preferred routes: a labyrinth no other person could ever precisely duplicate nor reproduce. Loneliness, I began to realize, was a populated place: a city in itself.” Sarah Choo Jing, 2016

Flights of the Mind presents an intersection of ongoing trajectories on a journey. Taking on the role as an anonymous voyeur; Choo observes and re-presents constructed coincidences and happenings on the Mass Transit Railway in Hong Kong.

Taking the viewer through time, the artist patrols the space between the real and the constructed, the actual and the imagined; between intimacy and estrangement. Through observing actual characters and moments in time, she presents a composite of documented footages; suggesting a potential narrative within an increasingly isolated urban aquarium.

Occasionally chasing and often searching for a temporal connection with strangers, Choo emphasizes on the very act of waiting and exemplifies on the deliberate slowing down of time. There is an uneasy recognition that the encountered scenes are lacerated culminations of the past, present and future. With a clear absence in communication, estranged passengers are taken from one point to another, in-between moments; in-transit.

About Sarah Choo Jing
Sarah Choo Jing (b.1990) is a Multidisciplinary Fine Artist who has recently completed her MFA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Art, University College of London. Focusing on the relationship between space and time, Choo’s work depicts identifiable moments and characters within contemporary society. Intentionally constructed, the artist reflects upon social and cultural norms.

Choo has recently been awarded First Place in the Moving Images Category at the Moscow International Foto Awards 2015. She has also been shortlisted as a Finalist in the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2014. In 2013, she was awarded the ICON De Martell Cordon Bleu Photography Award and Kwek Leng Joo Prize of Excellence in Still Photography Award.

The artist has since represented Singapore at the 19th Japan Media Arts Festival 2016, Art Paris 2015 which took place at the Grand Palais in Paris, Photo London 2015 which took place at The Somerset House and Cinema Total 2014, organized by Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin. Her works have been exhibited and collected locally and internationally at organizations such as the Singapore Art Museum and the Busan Museum in Korea.

A recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Gold Medal Award, Choo has been awarded The Photographer of The Year in the Fine Art Photography category at the 4th International Pollux Awards, USA. In 2012, she was a Finalist for the 3rd edition Julia Margaret Cameron Award, at The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards in Europe. That summer, she received several Honorable Mentions at the International Photography Awards.

Know more about ART PROJECTS GALLERY
Website: www.artprojectsasia.com
Facebook: ArtProjectsGallery
Instagram: ArtProjectsGallery
Twitter: artprojectsasia