Last month I stood in front of “I’m living in a land of false suns” at Long Story Short & I wanted to cry. Part of a group exhibition called Focal Point 3, the painting is massive, commanding — 85 inches tall and 64 inches wide. Within, a whorl of red-hot orange starburst shapes scatter and obfuscate. Tissue-thin patterns & flattened, angular slices of sky whip across the vertical plane. Ripples of teal shadow cling to the skittering tracks of pale blue ellipses. In the upper-left corner, something like a black hole draws the eye in until invariably the eye is spat back out to leap confusedly across the surrounding elements once again. I felt I couldn’t know where to look. I felt that the immense gravity of the work had done something visceral to me.
I got on a call with the artist Ivan David Ng just recently, who talked gregariously & enthusiastically about the techniques & preparations behind his three works in Focal Point 3. We spoke about the cultural erasure endured by the Hakka people (a Chinese diasporic group), about the proliferation of young people with cancer, about the moon as a symbol of eternal loss, about the weight of the sadness of living any life in the world today. At times, his gracious demeanor seemed to contradict the cutting intensity of his thought process & relentlessness of his work. But the work doesn’t attempt to explain away trauma or conflict — it forces us to examine our impulses & longings from different angles, through different materials. It asks us to situate ourselves within the known & unknown, the mythical, the tragic, the historic, & the hybrid. It asks us to find a way to keep going.
One of Ivan’s pieces draws from a Song dynasty-era poem about the moon. I was thinking about something a little more recent — Teresa Teng, a Taiwanese singer, popularized a ballad about the moon in the 70s called 月亮代表我的心 (Yuèliang Dàibiǎo Wǒ de Xīn), translated as “The Moon Represents My Heart.” I was thinking about this song, its lilt, sweetness, simplicity, after we ended our call. I was thinking about how sometimes the best way to move within the world is to make something with it — a note, a word, a painting — as Ivan does & will continue to do. I was thinking about how the moon represents his heart, & mine, & yours.
— Karissa Ho
I want to start by asking about the title “I’m living in a land of false suns,” which is so epic. It reminded me of Yoko Ono’s 1964 Grapefruit, a book of creative exercises, one of which is called “Tunafish Sandwich Piece.” The instructions are to imagine a thousand suns in the sky at once, then hold them there for an hour, then let them gradually melt into the sky. And then you make a tunafish sandwich & eat it. I would love for you to share the story behind the name of the paintings — why it was important to verbalize the “false” & “imaginary” suns beyond showing it visually.
“I’m living in a land of false suns” (2024)
Here I was thinking about our preoccupation with creating copies of the sun — from our very early use of fire, to our fluorescent lights, LED screens & lasers today. Even caffeine is a kind of chemical sun, separating our circadian rhythms from daylight. It seems like we’re always seeking autonomy from, & a sense of control over, something that is incredibly powerful & transcendent.
Consistent with this, I do think you’ve created an incredibly overwhelming viewing experience on a formal level by involving a lot of different mediums — digital prints, kozo paper, charcoal, acrylic, cyanotype, & more. I’d love to hear how the feeling behind the piece comes through in its materiality.
The undermost layer of the piece is a cyanotype print, developed one noon day in June 2023 in my studio. The sun moved across the print in an angular way, & I also traced its path with these geometric charcoal lines. But it’s hard to find the traces of the real sun in the finished work because it’s littered with sun symbols, these false suns that collectively work to obscure. I’m curious what stood out most to you in the piece?
My favorite parts of the piece are the corners, actually. Particularly the bottom right corner — I was struck by the moment of calm & stillness that you offer through this perfect sunset, or sunrise. Amidst the chaos & whirl of the rest of the composition, I felt I could ground myself, almost, in that corner. But I think your usage of cyanotype is so smart, & kind of familiar or nostalgic. I have fond memories of the medium — I used to make sun prints with my mom all the time with bits and pieces of found objects or flowers.
Detail from “I’m living in a land of false suns” (2024)
It’s so interesting you mention that corner. That square was the very last thing I worked on before the piece was done, to balance the composition. And cyanotype is an old friend — I used it for many years. I left it behind because the blue felt so recognizable, so specific. I felt like it was very limiting. But in the last year or so, maybe because I just bought the emulsion & I use what I have, it came back into my work. I guess it’s like the friend that comes in & out of your life. With regards to collage, one of my undergrad professors told me to never throw anything away — to always save everything, because you just don't know when that thing is going to appear in your work. Not everyone should take that advice. But I really saved all my scraps. Now I'm more intentional about it — in the past, I would tell myself, “just save it.” By 2019 I had three massive containers of scraps, so I wanted to see what I could make of it. This piece, “Predicament,” was made that year.
“Predicament” (2019)
It was sort of my first foray into working with scraps. And you can see the blue — that's the cyanotype, the sheets I’d had for years. I didn’t know what to do with them; I thought they were so ugly, I was so over it, you know? But I saved them. And then I started working in this language of collage. There are all kinds of random things in this piece, as well as the idea of fragmentation & congealment. What is interesting for me — reflecting on this impulse years later — is the attempt to conjure some kind of new story from something disparate.
Some of the material is paper from an artisan in 新疆 (Xīnjiāng) where the Uyghurs are. I went there to teach English for two months. I was one of the last few foreigners let into the region. Some material was from a failed experiment in the studio. There are also some stones my wife collected on a beach in Taiwan for me. Then chili peppers from my garden — I don't know if you've grown chilies before, but suddenly it was a lot of them, & I didn’t know what to do with them, so they ended up in my art. It’s things like that, things from various parts of my life and my experiences, coming together to form something else.
I do think I’m made of a hodgepodge of things — particularly because of my Singaporean background. My first language was English but my heart language is Mandarin, because that's what my grandma would speak to me. And our family is from this group that immigrated from Central China, eventually called the Hakka. They left their ancestral homeland & settled everywhere in the world — they became the largest Chinese diasporic group. So I'm thinking about diaspora — the various things, saving everything — in the context of people on the move, on the run, “guests” on land, you know, & the conglomeration of all these experiences that make us what we are today.
Do you think that the questions you’ve had to ask about your past, your family history, can be answered through the language of collage that you mentioned?
I think the postmodernists would say that there are no answers.
Yes, they’re bleak like that.
I’m not of that view. But I am of the view that what you find may not be concrete. The postmodernists are proponents of uncertainty, which I’m like, totally okay with, but I reject the full concept that you can’t know anything. I think that in practice the practice of making — making as a means of knowing — is a way of finding.
Growing up, I knew very little about the Hakka, because in Singapore, there was this very systemic washing away of sub-identities. When it was constructed as a nation-state, Singapore was a strategic, important port — that's why it became a crown colony like Hong Kong. And when the British set up the ports, people from all around southern China all came to the region to work. They came with their specific foods, specific tongues, some of it virtually unintelligible for other groups — the Hokkein didn’t understand the Hakka, you know. So, that was the context: Singapore was this mix already, & then there were Tamil people from India, Punjabi people from India, the local islanders too. But when Singapore as a nation-state was formed, officials categorized everyone into four distinct races: Chinese, Indian, Malay, & others. And government policies discouraged the speaking of native tongues in preference of Mandarin as the trade language, as the official language for the Chinese people. I'm the outcome of that policy — it happened to my dad as a kid in the 70s. My dad would speak Mandarin, & would speak the Hakka language to my grandparents, or his parents — when I was growing up, there was none of that. Most people in my generation don't speak that sublanguage anymore. There’s been a very systematic erasure not just of language, but also through these homogenizing categories, & the washing away of culture.
When my grandmother passed away in 2015, I didn't know anything about the Hakka people. But when I started making work following this train of thought, I learned so much. I connected with so many young Hakka people — I realized one of my best friends was Hakka. So I didn’t find anything concrete, evidence of where exactly my family's descended from, & a lot of that information is lost with every generation that passes. But actually, in the journey of making, I found a lot of other things.
So sometimes making is the answer.
Yeah.
There are a many things I appreciate here. The first is hybridity, in a few aspects: I think quite literally about Singapore & Hong Kong as hybrid zones, that were truly melting pots, but also of spaces of consolidation, & as you mentioned, rote categorization. I see that hybridity reflected in this work formally as well — like, is it a sculpture? Is it a painting? Generically, can anyone really be sure? Does it even matter? The second thing is the profound & terrifying thought of decades of family history that have already been lost. But what I see here is you’ve taken something that was consolidated, compressed, flattened to one language, one category of peoples, & expanded it in an explosive & exploratory way.
I just want to say I really appreciate that you're taking such a close look at the work. It means a lot to an artist that someone actually bothers to dig deep into the work — that they’re interested, not just entertained. I think art can become entertainment, like, that's nice, you listened to some artist talk. But I feel like you're digesting & reflecting on what your own experiences are. I really appreciate that. That's what I like, long for as an artist, you know?
Oh, it’s such a privilege to not only be able to think about your work, but also to get to discuss it with you now! It’s honestly some of the most exciting, formally dynamic stuff I've seen in a while. I actually do want to talk about “Don’t accuse the moon for our longings” now. This one, to me, is more explicitly sinister than the others, partly because of the jagged hangnail shapes of the moons, but also because of the ominous repetition of the neon squiggles. Looking at this one is like watching a scene from a science fiction movie unfold. I just finished Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem, so I guess I’ve been thinking about science fiction a lot. But this painting feels cinematic to me in many ways. I’d love to hear anything you want to share about your thinking behind the piece.
“Don’t accuse the moon for our longings” (2024)
This painting responds to a Song dynasty poem called “水调歌头 • 明月几时” (shuĭ diào gē tóu • míngyuè jĭshí yǒu). It was popularized through a song by Faye Wong — she's like the Mariah Carey. She's iconic. There’s a line in the poem that can be loosely translated as: “The human condition is sorrow & joy, loss & reunion. In the same way, there are nights where the moon is hidden by an overcast sky, nights where it gleams, nights of fullness, & nights of waning.” I see the moon as an entity that presides over the suffering that humans go through & the longing humans go through. It presides over that domain, but it refuses to intervene. It does nothing.
Growing up, there was a superstition that my mom would warn me of. She would tell me to never point at the moon, because the moon would wound me with a cut in my ear — pointing is disrespectful. Pointing is an accusatory act. Here, the pointing is a means of accusing the moon for not intervening in suffering, like a cold bystander to the loss & longing that humanity goes through. So the crescent shapes allude to the moon, but also to slices, or cuts, or wounds. And loss. I think I’m experiencing more loss — I’ve lost a number of friends to cancer, and I’ve had to learn to deal with death, or the permanent loss of someone. There’s always a sense of unfairness. The human condition of loss — I'm starting to taste it.
I do feel that this work is cutting, in that there's a sense of grief, & mourning. In a very physical way, we can even think about the moon as a taker, as an absorber. Of course the moon has no light of its own; everything that it reflects is from the sun, from what it’s taken away. And so I think this piece really works because of that natural fact & the natural fact of loss, in the human condition & in every human life.
Detail from “Don’t accuse the moon for our longings” (2024)
Yeah. The light streaks you asked about are actually long exposure photographs of the moon. The shutter of the camera was opened & then the camera was dragged across the sky. I see that as, like, drawing in the sky. It’s a means of claiming the sky, but also, sometimes a mark is able to speak to longing better than words.
Sometimes it's easier to generate ways of visualizing loss & longing than to have to talk about it.
What did you think of the titles of the pieces in the show?
I like the extended titles. You just have more room to work with. In this title, for example, a viewer will be thinking about all these things you mentioned — what does it mean to point a finger & accuse someone of something, or something of something in this case? In so many ways, even at the level of wording, this painting takes feelings of grief & loss and turns it into something else.
It’s interesting that in Chinese culture, the moon is, in the collective memory, it seems, always about relationships.
It really is. When I think of the moon, I'm thinking about Chang'e, being very sad & very lonely, with the rabbit. The moon is a place of loss.
Yeah. I’m also responding to that idea of Hakka ancestry — there's a lot of loss for people that fled an ancestral homeland. No one knows where they're from, actually. You've been so detached from your identity that you forget who you are. What is your culture? What's your architecture like? What's your art like? I think the Hakka people have also assimilated so much into the broader Chinese identity. They fought to be classified as Han Chinese. But wanting to assimilate is protective, right? It’s a protective impulse — the assimilation impulse is not vanity. It's survival.
My mother is a therapist and we speak often about how immigration is trauma, fundamentally, because of the dimensions of loss that immigrants experience on material levels, on social levels, economic levels. So I appreciate that in this piece you speak to your own history of loss, but a broader set of loss as well. I can very easily identify with it, as can any other person. That is a remarkable accomplishment.
Thank you. As an artist, the work should serve as a starting point for a conversation. Of course, there's a professional aspect to it. There's a financial aspect to it. But at the end of the day, I think one of the most precious parts of the work are the conversations that come out. When people engage with the work. You know? We’re two strangers, but this conversation has been so meaningful. And we get to see each other’s humanity function. The work should help foster some of these things.
I do want to talk about conversations between people, but also actually between works, because your works are featured in a group show — & I think the curation was really excellent. To me, it feels like there are really similar sorts of curvatures, even colors, & a sense of motion throughout the entire show. In your pieces, there are elements that reflect the trees & the bark of JiaJia's paintings, but also the spouts & streams in Kevin's paintings. I wonder about how you’re thinking about the dialogue between your work & the other pieces in the show.
For me, formally, it makes complete sense why we were put together. We’re dealing with themes of identity erasure, & tapping into the larger consciousness of Chinese people who have had different kinds of upbringings. Also, JiaJia’s work has these elements of trees, almost as if he represents the earth, & then I'm dealing with the sky.
My last question for you actually does deal with the Earth and the sky. Because in your bio, of course, it says that your creative practice investigates human existence between land & sky. And so I would love for you to talk a little bit about what that means to you.
That line summarizes the general investigation of my work — what it means to exist as human wedged between earth & sky. But the engine of the work is ethnicity, or the personal or familial complications of being Hakka. But of course the two are connected. Every culture actually tells stories about themselves on their land. And people always think about ethnicity as emerging from land, but, actually, what I'm adding to the conversation is that ethnicity is about land and sky. The story of land tainted with, like, pillage, conquering, capitalist extraction, war, all these things. But the sky puts us in our place by causing us to think of how small we are. The fighting is very pointless, in the scheme of the whole universe. So I do feel like the sky is a more generous place, & I want to add that dimension to the conversation.
Once you realize how small you are, really, it frees you up in a way that allows you to begin processing that which is heavy, traumatic, full of loss.
Yeah. Also, I was always a city boy. So when my wife & I first moved to Ohio, which is where her family is from, we lived in the countryside. I became very aware of where the celestial bodies were. I knew that the sun always rose from one side of the house, & it always set on the other side of the house. I knew that the moon was taking a certain path, an arch across the sky. It felt like a very intense & dramatic movement. I was also trying to connect myself with my Hakka ancestry. Over time, the air we breathe has changed because of pollution. There’s different vegetation. It can seem like everything's so different. But the surviving shared experience about across time is that of the celestial bodies. It's the same sun & the same moon that's presiding over our existence. We see the same big dipper.
And you know how Asian immigrants in America used to be called “celestials” & “moon-eyed” as slurs? I think those terms are kind of beautiful. Now I’m making work using celestial bodies or about celestial bodies. And celestial bodies have gravity, which then organizes things in a certain rhythm or way. That’s how I'm thinking about abstract painting also. I'm a celestial body, then I'm committing acts of gravity on the canvas, because gravity organizes things in a certain kind of logic. Constructing the work.
So that’s how I started engaging the sky in this way. This is coaxing some kind of connection backwards in time. But I also realized it's a trans-geographic kind of engagement. The night before we moved here, to the U.S., my daughter was freaking out — she was a baby, like, five months old. We had an early flight. I really needed her to sleep. She wouldn't sleep, so I brought her downstairs from my parents' apartment in the carrier, & I saw a beautiful full moon, & I took a picture. And then she fell asleep. And then two nights later, we were in the Ohio countryside. And I looked up, & it was the same moon. I was on the other side of the world, but there was the same moon saying hi to me. It transcends geographies & it transcends individuals.
Once, my dad called me on the phone to ask if I had seen the moon that night, & I think I started crying. That was really touching to me. It was something that we could share even apart, something very physical & tangible. Amidst the sadness that we've talked about, there is also a lot of beauty & deep joy and gratitude for the connection we do have. And hope, too.
The Song dynasty poem that I talked about was written by a scholar who was sent off to a faraway province. He wrote it longing for his family, under a full moon. He wrote that we share the same moon even though we're miles apart. So what you just described to me — it’s the same impulse. The one the poet had.
"Focal Point 3" is on view at Long Story Short until July 28, 2024. All images courtesy of Long Story Short and Ivan David Ng.
Karissa Ho is a writer and visual designer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Red Ogre Review, Flash Frog, Radar Poetry, and JMWW. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she studies English literature and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a very fast walker.
Ivan David Ng is an artist from Singapore, presently based in the U.S. His practice investigates what it means to exist as human, wedged between land and sky. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He was awarded the Gold Award in the UOB Painting of the Year in 2020, one of the most recognized art accolades in Southeast Asia. His work has been published in New American Paintings and Art & Market and he has also worked on projects with Louis Vuitton, Uber Technologies Inc and Singapore Land Group.