twined musings
twined musings explores the nuance of line, form, and pattern in ways that envelope the concepts of each of the individual perspectives the artists endeavor to tell. The work in the exhibition exudes a powerful, quiet confidence. There is evidence of intense labor, love, and craft that is both technical and tactile in nature. Process is what manifests these creations. The work inspires questions about the mundane. How can abstract spaces and forms be recontextualized through physical outputs? What can we observe by how communities can interconnect, as well as divide? What is a fence? Is it merely a boundary, or something more? And what can be accepted and let go?
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the gallery at ccbc essex
april 17 - june 10, 2023
receptions: april 20, 10am-12pm & 6pm-8pm
The twined musings Podcast
Mallory Kimmel, the Collections Technician for the Galleries at CCBC, sat down via Teams with the twined musings artists Annika Cheng, Paolo Miguel Dela Vina, Weichen L. Hwang, and Linah Sedeek and their graphic designer for the show Joell Ang to interview them about their exhibition. Over the course of this 3-hour long interview, the artist discuss how they met, what inspired the show, their thoughts on their practice, and more.
We were honored to be able to spend this time with them and are excited to share the interview with you in a series of podcast episodes. These episodes will be uploaded on the website and are free for all to stream or download as they desire.
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The music in the intro and outro is entitled Sunset Vibes by 23843807 on Pixabay.
Take a 3D Tour
The Gallery at CCBC Essex invites you to take a 3D tour of the exhibition of twined musings. Take your time and explore the space at your own pace from the comfort of anywhere in the world. If you are having trouble seeing the below tour, click here to open it in a separate window.
This body of work manifests the relationships between people, using intertwining stitches as a metaphor for togetherness. Through the labor of repetition, links and loops twine together into the larger web of community. What are the ways that identity can connect and divide? How can something that holds and comforts become something that entraps and fractures? Can a blanket become a net? Can a fence become a link? These objects seek to grasp these complexities and gather them together dearly.​
photos coming soon
About Cheng
å¼ ç¾Žä½³ Annika Cheng is an interdisciplinary artist and activist from Queens, New York City. Through soft sculptural works, she explores the sino-diasporic experience, and seeks to define what contemporary Chinese American culture looks like. She investigates the ways traditions are passed down, changed, and adapted, and how these practices bond people together. She also explores the disruption of culture and the separations of people, and how that can affect identity on both an individual and collective scale. Her most recent exhibitions include Chinatown Chronicles at Eastern Connecticut State University (2023), Adorned: Inspired by Fabric and Fashion at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden (2022), Asia in Maryland at the Asian Arts & Culture Center at Towson University).
How can something temporary be so ingrained within? For better or for what it was, I find that the journey to acceptance is one that is less than ideal, but through all this, something tragic could turn into something favorable in disguise. My body of work is manifested as separate entities that take space and exist from nuanced feelings of a longing for closeness (a specific kind of intimacy) as a means of transmutation, or the exchange of old to new. As rough and blurred edges, imperfect lines and scribbles, unfinished sequences, and slanted writings, the work also acts as a means of hushing the constant chatter that resides in my mindscape allowing for a sense of release.
photos coming soon
About Dela Vina
Paolo Miguel Dela Vina (they/he) is a Filipino-American interdisciplinary artist from Owings Mills, MD. They received their BFA in Illustration with minors in Painting and Creative Writing at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Paolo Miguel is a ponderer, someone whose mind is never quiet or still. Usually not sticking to just one methodology of making, they integrate their understandings of visual and performance processes to form narratives of human experience in mindfulness and healing. Their research is much like an ongoing sketchbook or diary where they are simultaneously observing and thinking in the past and present tense. How they choose to create is driven by the intention of releasing what is no longer serving them to embrace presence.
This body of work contains a throughline of examining fence and boundary structures as concrete and abstract demarcations. The borrowing of these familiar and found patterns provides structures for considering imagined and occupied spaces. Where do we begin and where do we end? How far and thin can we spread ourselves? Where are we never allowed to go? Placed on illusory ‘blank’ and ‘void’ backdrops, these works stand as objects and images for rationalizing and dreaming.
photos coming soon
About Hwang
Weichen Leslie Hwang is an American-Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist. They work with the sentimental and the memory to examine their standings in grey spaces and in betweens. Borrowing from second-hand collections and cataloged interests, their work looks to demand a moment for the common miracle. They’re writing love letters as ways to process and understand interpersonal and inter-objectional relationships. They’re borrowing stories and keeping memories.
Presently they are thinking about auto-translators and silent active calls, examining sensations of love, remembrance, guilt, and grief. They are remembering the brilliant pink of paper flowers on their walk home.
This body of work explores capturing space through line, whether that be in three-dimensional or two-dimensional ways. Weaving is the vehicle through which boundaries are defined between light, forms, and viewers. Line surrounds and protects both physical spaces and the spaces held in my memories, intertwining the two and holding them tightly.
photos coming soon
About Sedeek
Linah Sedeek is a designer and artist interested in the process of switching between digital and physical methods of working to create hybrid outputs. Using parametric design and weaving, her work plays with translucency and opacity, openness and closeness, and light and shadow. She explores the physicality of memories and connections by expressing spatial concepts in two dimensions, informing her practice of creating three-dimensional spaces using two-dimensional materials.
Linah graduated in 2022 from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Architectural Design and minors in Graphic Design and Art History.