Ching Ching Cheng: Book Of Space

Ching Ching Cheng’s year-long project Book of Space exhibition titled “Drape With The Skin Of Light” was inspired by a folktale originating from China about a farm girl falling in Love with the Sun, this multimedia project explored the meanings and influences of Chinese and Taiwanese glove puppetry folktale and the impact on the generational relationships between the past, the present, and the future. The project’s final presentation of new works opened on June 3, 2023.

Ching first began development in 2022 by creating a fabricated glove puppetry stage made of cardboard, fabric, and corrugated plastic. In the months of November and December, Ching hosted a series of youth “Mythical Gloves Puppets” workshops at local community libraries in Pasadena teaching children from ages six to twelve about glove puppet creation. Participants learned about the history of glove puppetry in China and Taiwan culture as a form of caring tales. The kids created their own puppets using fabric, glue, and dry air clay and got the opportunity to showcase their creations on the puppet stage.  

Glove puppetry is a traditional form of telling oral stories and folktales in Chinese and Taiwanese culture. It is a type of opera using cloth puppets that originated during the 17th century in Southern China. Oftentimes, the hand puppetry was performed on temporary stages outside of temples or on the side of the street. Many of the folktales of glove puppetry were stories elaborated from the book, The Classic Of Mountains And Seas (Shan Hai Jung), and the characters of the hand puppets range from deities in human forms, deities in animal and human hybrid forms, to human beings. The storylines oftentimes portray certain types of moral concepts.

At the end of the residency, Ching’s exhibition transformed the interior of Side Street Projects’ blue woodworking trailer into the portal of the glove puppet celebration afterlife. The bodily and tactile ceramic and neon plaster sculpture molds along with the iridescent vinyl and colorful pool noodles standing precariously invited the viewers entering the portal to imagine being the puppets themselves, and being transported into the imaginary tales, amplifying how the stories could continue and where the stories could belong.

This project is made possible with the support of The Cultural Affairs Division of the City of Pasadena and the Arts and Culture Commission.   

BIO

Ching Ching Cheng was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States in 2002. She received her MFA from Art Center College of Design. Ching exhibited at LACMA Rental and Sales Gallery, Chinese American Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, 21c Museum, DTLA ArtCenter, colleges, universities and art fairs through out the United States, and also had solo exhibitions in Taiwan and China. She attended an artist-in-residency funded by Sustainable Art Foundation at Elsewhere Studio in Colorado, Cardboard City in Santa Monica, and Atche Art Space in Los Angeles in 2022, and at 943 Studio in Kunming, China in 2011. She taught lectures and workshops at colleges, Universities, museums, non-profit organizations, and private art centers. She recently received Individual Artist Grants from the City of Pasadena in 2022, received grants in 2018 from the city of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and received grants in 2011, in 2015 from art and cultural center in Taiwan. Ching currently lives and works in Altadena, California.

Follow Ching Ching Cheng on Instagram @chingchingcheng

In 2022, Ching Ching Cheng was invited to “develop a project with the clear intention of interdependent multigenerational engagement and sanctuary in the community of Pasadena” based on SSP’s Artist Residency theme “Symbionts: Organisms living in symbiosis”.