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Bird flying - green

Maria Cheung - 2019

Clay modeling; high temperature glazed ceramic, metal and wood base.

21,00 cm height x 26,00cm width x 14,00 cm depth

USD 460,00

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Delivery period: 20 to 25 days to any country outside Brazil

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Product code: 14382

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THE ARTIST

Maria Cheung

“For me, art is a tool of expression, that serves to provoke reflections first in ourselves, and as a result of this, in others”

Maria Cheung – Cheung Miu Kuen – was born in Hong Kong, in 1957, and brought up, from infancy, in Brazil. In her art, she revisits her origins in an unceasing quest to recover her roots, her identity, recapture what was left behind. “When I arrived in Brazil at age seven, I had to negate my culture, to be accepted in the new society,” she says. In this quest for herself she explores intense images of customs, traditions and personal memories.

Her key material is ceramics – also used with other materials in installations, sometimes of monumental size. They inspire a dialectic between doing and reflection on the human condition – key themes in negation; exclusion; oppression; feminine suffering; the tortures her ancestors were submitted to; the culture of silence.

In dealing with these violent universes of Chinese women, the sacrifices of pain, she invokes an inclusive reference to all women, in all cultures. Her work is an enquiry, almost an inquisition, but with depth and elegance – a universal feminism, without frontiers. Intimacy, contemplation, seclusion, the body, the male/female relationship, equality, injustice, the sense that there is a collective – all these are present in the series of sculptures she has produced over the years.

Adapting rapidly to Brazil, she graduated in Artistic Education in 1981; began a course in ceramics with Megumi Yuasa in São Paulo, and became his assistant by the end of 1985. From that time she sold her work, but in 1987 moved to Ciudad del Este, in Paraguay, where she opened an import business, and for seven years withdrew completely from ceramics.

The artist, however, spoke louder; and returning to art in 1994, she received three awards, one bring of major national importance – from the 53^rd Plastic Arts salon in Curitiba, Paraná – and outside Brazil, she was recognized with the Second Prize at the II Concorso Internazionale Pablo Picasso, in Milan. Here was the confirmation that she was taking the right direction, a motivation to stay on the path.

She has held many exhibitions in Brazil and the rest of the world. In 2016, participation in the exhibition The Mode in Liling, China, was her opportunity to realize the ancient dream of returning to China as an artist. She used the symbolism of ceramic door knockers to humbly request permission to return to her native soil to be recognized as an artist – and included photographs taken in the village where her parents lived until just before moving to Brazil. As well as her door-knocker project, she re-used porcelain factory waste to make two more works for that exhibition: an installation with six large abacuses, and a delicate room screen – both expressing memories of affection.

She now lives and works in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, where she has maintained a ceramic studio since 1995. Her career has earned numerous awards at important salons. Her type of work has led her to create many public works in several countries. These include: Semen-tê – Fecundação (‘Seed/Fecundation’), at the Avellaneda Emilio Villafañe Municipal Ceramics Institute in Argentina; Nui Toy I, II, III, at the Uttarayan Art Foundation, in Vadodara, India; Regressing to Myself I, II, III, at the Liling Ceramics Valley Museum, China; and Sonata XI, at the Wien Museum, Vienna.

She is definitively more than a Chinese or Brazilian artist. She is an artist of the world.

“For me, art is a tool of expression, that serves to provoke reflections first in ourselves, and as a result of this, in others,” she says. She adds that she often thought of studying chemistry – but luckily discovered that “chemistry with ceramics is much more entertaining”.

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