Sixty Strokes (Chloe Zheng 郑咏青)

May 2026

Mixed media with silk, lamp, cotton strings, video projection with audio

Dimensions variable

Sixty Strokes is both the title, and the amount that takes to compose my names in both Chinese and English. Sixty silk cutouts are suspended from delicate cotton strings that is entangled, illuminated and swaying gently, casting shadows against the space and a video projection in the background.

From most angles, the characters form a conglomerate of gibberish, but at a single point, it formulates my name. The curling, swirling, dangling cutouts are my attempt to visualise the hyphenated experience within my cross-cultural identities. Silk harbours my cultural upbringings, its translucency expresses the vulnerability of cultural identity.

The audio tracks are recordings from family and friends articulating my names in their own ways. In English, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, the fleeting bursts of syllables are echoed in the characters that flash across the screen. The myriad of emotions that was associated with individuals capture the coexistence of cultural identities, where each distinctive pronunciation of my name converges into a fluid cultural identity that evolves through time.

The work poses an unfinished sentence on my identities, one that is constantly being written and rewritten.