SHOW ME THE WAY, AND I’LL GO THERE

Chinatown Soup is pleased to present Show Me The Way, And I’ll Go There, a solo exhibition by returning artist Choichun Leung that is on view from November 15 - 27, 2022. The artist returns to her roots in metal-smithing to showcase a series of small-scale bronze sculptures, marking the public debut of her sculptural work in New York City. 

Please join us for an opening reception on Thursday, November 17th from 6 to 8 PM and an artist talk on Friday, November 18th from 6 to 7 PM in acknowledgement of World Day For Prevention Of Child Abuse. 

Choi forgoes the two-dimensional picture plane in favor of cast bronze and inset diamonds. Beginning in 2012, her autobiographical drawings began to take on new life and meaning in the third dimension. This sculpture series constructs a world drawn from psychology and spirituality, juxtaposing fantastical and realist elements that depict the artist’s inner world.

Linking the conscious and subconscious, this body of work moves past documenting the artist’s “memory clips,” a phrase Choi coined to emphasize the equivocality of remembering and dreaming, and ventures into realms of journeying, meditation, and energy work. Choi’s recurring motif of hands alludes to the physicality of her trauma, the act of saying “no”, and her ongoing practice of Reiki, an eastern methodology for healing most often accomplished through touch. 

Through the therapeutic mediums of Reiki and sculpting, Choi works at the intersection of cathartic ritual and narrative storytelling to create an installation that demonstrates her emotional journey from trauma to inner peace and the nonlinear path she has taken. Choi says, “By instigating recollection, powerful conversations begin as people explore self-discovery, truth, and transformation.” Unifying mutual struggle and communal healing, Show Me The Way, And I’ll Go There cultivates an imperative dialogue surrounding an often invisible form of violence by replacing shame with self-authorship and self-healing.

Choichun Leung was raised in Wales, U.K, and has been living and working in Brooklyn, New York since 1994. Leung earned a BA (Hons) Degree in Silversmithing at Loughborough College of Art/Design, UK. A self-taught painter, she previously worked as a background artist for animation films in Hong Kong and as an assistant to artist Peter Max in NYC.

Leung began exploring memory via painting in 2006, however, the abstract slowly became literal, and in 2012 she started a series of personal autobiographical drawings. What began as a single sketch is now a multi-disciplinary art project of drawings, paintings, film, books, activism, and collaborations. This accumulation of work was the beginning of  The Young Girl Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing awareness and direct intervention to childhood sexual assault via a narrative-based program, as a means of remedying the lasting effects of childhood sexual abuse on victims.

Leung serves as the subject and producer of The Art of Survival, a mixed-media short documentary currently in production, following the progress of the autobiographical drawings she started in 2012. Leung recently illustrated 44 Prayers, a book collaboration with author and guide, Mark Daniel, based on the Tree Of Life. Leung has also worked for Glossier and Proenza Schouler with editorials in CR Fashion Book, Allure, and Puss Puss Magazine, to raise awareness of this issue through art.