Cecile Chong is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, installation, video, and public art, layering materials, identities, histories, and languages. Her work addresses ideas of cultural interaction and interpretation, as well as the commonalities humans share in our relationship to nature and to each other. Inspired by materials as signifiers, she is interested in how we acquire and share culture, and how world cultures now overlap and interact in ways previously inconceivable. With uncertainty looming in everything from our economies to our weather patterns, she’s concerned with the fragility of our civilization despite the universality of its cultural underpinnings. In her work she’s been looking at traditional artifacts and wondering what tangible relics we may leave for future generations and what they may say about who we were and how we lived.
Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and grew up in Quito and Macau. She lives and works in New York. Her public art installation EL DORADO – The New Forty Niners has been installed in each borough of New York City. She has received fellowships and residencies including New York State Council on the Arts, the Hispanic Society Vilcek Artist Research Fellowship, LMCC Creative Engagement, Urban Field Station, The Block Gallery/ AIM Artist Hub, BRIC Media Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, Wave Hill Winter Workspace, the Lower East Side Printshop, MASS MoCA Studios, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, The Center for Book Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, AIM – Bronx Museum, Urban Artist Initiative NYC, Aljira Emerge and the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. Solo exhibitions include Kates-Ferri Projects, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, Selenas Mountain, ICFAC at Pinta Miami, Smack Mellon, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Selena Gallery, BRIC House, Emerson Gallery Berlin, Germany, Honey Ramka Project Space, Figureworks, Praxis International Art Project Space, Corridor Gallery and ArtSPACE. Group exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio, Nevada Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Arts, Hunterdon Museum, CUE Art Foundation, Wave Hill, BravinLee, Sue Scott Gallery in the US and the Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London. Cecile’s work is in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, Museum of Chinese in America, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Center for Book Arts and Citibank Art Advisory. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Artnet, Huffington Post, El Diario La Prensa, Singtao Daily, 3dotswater.com and The New York Times. She received an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design in 2008, an MA in education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College. Cecile is currently part of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program.