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Cheng Ting Ting (Chinese: 鄭婷婷; b. 1990) is a contemporary artist from Hong Kong. Her oeuvre includes primarily oil paintings and drawings, but also prints , artists' books , collages and projections. Cheng’s works are personal and often about memories from her childhood and adolescence, as well as sights and objects from her daily life. She currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Norway, and is represented by Gallery EXIT

Early life and education
Born in 1990, Cheng Ting Ting grew up in Sha Tin District of Hong Kong. Cheng’s affinity for art began at an early age, and remained unabated as she continued to study visual arts in high school and university. As a third-year student, she went abroad for an exchange programme at Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Italy—an experience that Cheng cited as having a significant impact on her road to self-discovery. In 2013, Cheng graduated with a BA in Visual Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, winning the AVA Award at the graduation exhibition.

Cheng is a full-time artist with a studio in Fo Tan. She worked briefly as a full-time assistant designer at a marketing and communications firm after graduation. Apart from working at her studio, she also teaches art to young children ages two to four at Art in Hospital on a part-time basis.

Artistic practice
Cheng draws inspiration from her daily life, and uses her personal experiences to reflect on and make connections to larger themes and questions of interest. Her works often involve childhood and adolescent memories, and deal with feelings of isolation and detachment. Painting from visual memory, Cheng employs dynamic brushstrokes and varied colour palettes to render depictions of people, objects and events onto the canvas. Rather than realistic portrayals, she prefers conveying personal, surreal impressions of her subjects; as such, her works are often deemed “autobiographical.”   According to the statement of her most recent solo exhibition Recipient Absent (2019), what Cheng “paints become tools to investigate her own condition and place in the world.”

In an early solo exhibition Fall In Fall Out (2017), she explored the conflicting desires between individuality and social conformity, while in Enfante (2017), she examined the disconnect between her adult and younger self which she saw as separate entities. In the latter exhibition, her works also took on a child-like quality both in technique and colour, drawing upon her observations as an art educator for young children in conjunction with her own childhood memories.

Cheng chooses to paint in oil, because she enjoys its slow and abstract process, and its relative passivity compared to other art forms. In an interview with CoBo Social, she explains: “...painting is passive, there is a safe distance between the art and viewer. Sometimes, with more conceptual art, you feel that the artist is trying to push you to look at the work through a certain prism.” Of her painting process, Cheng describes, “I used to make rough sketches first; now, I directly create on the canvas, allowing my brush to outline the composition in step with my thoughts. My creations are formed in hindsight, and are not determined first by a theme or concept." Cheng cites twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who is best known for his contemplative still-life paintings, as an inspiration . Her preference for painting is au contraire to fellow contemporary artists of her generation, who are experimenting with installation and multimedia arts  . Apart from painting, Cheng also regularly sketches in ink and pencil.

Exhibitions
Cheng's solo exhibitions include Recipient Absent, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2019) ; Enfante, chi art space, Hong Kong (2017) ; Fall In Fall Out, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2017) ; and Open Close Quotation, Wan Fung Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2015).

Her works were shown in various group exhibitions as well. Selected group exhibitions include Very Natural Actions, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019) ; Yummy Gummy, Tomorrow Maybe, Hong Kong (2019) ; Shek-O Sublime, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2019) ; A Tree Fell in the Forest, and No One’s There, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2018) ; The Pendulant Mass, Galerie Ovo, Taipei (2016); →, Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2016) ; The Imaginary Order, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2016) ; Imagine there’s no country, Above us only our cities, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015) ; According to ‘Them’, Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre L0 Gallery, Hong Kong (2014).