Cindy Leung calls many places home. Home is a borrowed place on borrowed time for her. Leung is a sculptor from Hong Kong, and currently based in Los Angeles, CA. She received her MFA from University of Florida, and BFA from Queens College, City University of New York. She is a full-time faculty at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA. She exhibited her work nationally and internationally including Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, and Pensacola Museum of Art in Pensacola, FL. In 2023, Leung was awarded the Foundation of Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant for her solo exhibition at Gallery 456 in New York City.
Using Chinese exports―silk, tea, and porcelain as a point of entry, I create materially hybrid objects primarily out of these materials to explore how objects and people come together, through the complex relationship between consumerism, colonization, and cultural hybridity. These materials were historically associated with the British colonization in China since they originated in the East, and were popularized in the West through trading and wars. I consider these materials being a part of my identity, given that I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I pair these materially hybrid objects with poems that explore the different weights of words in both Chinese and English languages. The pairing reflects my bilingual education, as well as the code-switching skill that many bilingual people share.
The recent expansion of my materials includes the use of shipping peanuts, foam, glass, and fiber. In the process of assembling the hybrid objects with these new materials, I realized the meaning of the work migrated from identity work into a realm where I explore how people cultivate a sense of togetherness through transportation and globalization. Working with ceramics and other materials led me into the expanded field, in which I get to embed meanings in my hybrid objects by working with the history of the materials.