NADA New York 2024

Diptych composed of two (2) drawings, 24 x 24 cm each.

Deconstructed slogans from the protest movement in Hong Kong. Two slogans were written on two sheets of 16 x 16 cm paper. Each sheet was divided and cut into 256 1 x 1 cm squares and numbered 1 - 256. The squares are reorganised into a 16 x 16 grid according to the steps in a knight’s tour on a 16 x 16 grid.

A knight’s tour is a sequence of moves of a knight on a chessboard such that the knight visits every square exactly once. The knight moves two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically.

The work is part of the “Potentially Seditious” project, where Chingsum Jessye Luk makes a deliberate effort to render text illegible, as the only way to express certain ideas is to hide and censor them.

After Hong Kong’s national security law was passed in 2020, certain slogans or words could be considered seditious and people who display or utter them in public could be arrested and prosecuted as a threat to national security.