Genevieve Chua

Genevieve Chua (1984, born and based in Singapore) employs abstraction to examine fundamental questions of painting, particularly its structures, processes and modes of visualisation. Underpinned by an interest in natural history, linguistics and technological systems, their work often explores how the human element—be it bodily, cognitive or emotional—can figure as disruption an increasingly mechanised world.

A painter by training, Chua also works with printmaking, installation and performance to create pictorial planes that occupy ‘two-and-a-half dimensions’. In their Edge Control (2015–ongoing) series, Chua creates hard-edge monochromatic paintings on canvases shaped by hand. Abstract, vector-like patterns form on these surfaces, accompanied by curious titles that lend a personal narrative to the paintings. In Artificially Intelligent (2021), a work comprising embossed prints and etched acrylic sculptures, Chua constructed graphic forms from non-alphanumeric keyboard characters like slashes, brackets and full-stops. Guided by the artist’s emotion and instinct rather than computer algorithms, these punctuation marks drift and stutter rhythmically across the prints to resemble concrete poetry.

Chua obtained their Diploma in Painting from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2004 and their MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2018. Their work is found in various collections including the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Notable exhibitions include Closed during Opening Hours (2019), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore; Matter and Place (2019), Museum MACAN, Jakarta; Unearth/ed (2014), Singapore Art Museum; Encountering the Unknown (2013), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; and Full Moon & Foxes (2009), National Museum of Singapore. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including APT10 (2022), 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane.

Chua has had three residencies at the STPI Workshop in 2010, 2019 and 2022, resulting in the respective exhibitions BMW Young Asian Artists Series III: Genevieve Chua, Lyra Garcellano, R.E. Hartanto (2011), Twofold (2020), curated by Melanie Pocock, and granular (2023), curated by Reuben Keehan.