Q & A with Poon Kan Chi

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In colourful mixed media paintings, the 35-year-old Hong Kong artist Pook Kan Chi
shares her memory with us: Millenium girl is the result of entertaining and
popular motives Poon Kan Chi was exposed to while growing up in the
late 80ies and 90ies. In today’s Q&A, the artist tells us more about
this body of work, the joy of painting and her hopes for the future.

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Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work, especially the “Millenium Girl” series.

Hello, I was born in Hong Kong in 1987 living my childhood and study art over there. Hong Kong is a very small but busy city, escape life pressure and being creative is so call “art”. I created and following by the first feeling come into my mind naturally, all my work in general is the reflection of life experience.

“Millennium girl” series is based on the environment that I grew up in during my whole teenage period, it is about the time and space where I was raised and lived. It is about what is popular and what is fun in my memories. Key words are: y2k, 2000 and city girl. The paintings might be photos of female stars of the beautiful years in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990, or they might be fashionable CD covers of female singers in the 90s, or as well, models for a fashion magazine produced in 2000. All of this was absorbed by me and like a juicer, I mixed it all together- the Japanese OL, the Hot Girls, Lolita subculture, French haute couture fashion shows. Together, they nourished me and created an ideal shape, seemingly fragile, but strong and constantly repeating themselves in my mind.

When you create a piece of art, do you have the viewer in mind and if they’ll be able to relate to it or you create the piece mainly for yourself?

I create for humans who have the teenage girl’s heart and spirit. Myself or others, all are welcome. One of my greatest experiences is seeing young children to teenage girls enjoying my artworks in the exhibition.

What does painting offer you if you compare it to other forms of art?

To me painting is color on flat surface, it means it is mental traces and marks of feelings. Which is very similar to words and languages, but only in my way. Speed is fast and motion will be quick in the process of my creation about the marks on surface. Only the digestion and duration of feelings, the psychological trace are long to process.

What do you like about working in series?

It like a series of TV drama. Or a fashion season collection. Working in series is a timeline of the mental process of making marks and colour on surface, it is hard to know the stopping point, sometimes it ends by physical condition, out of papers or something like that, sometimes it end by free will.

How is your creative process- from an idea to the finished piece?

I do what I say mostly, but there is limited of time and space, it needs balance.

How does painting and creating in general make you feel?

Good. Just good.

What are the challenges that you have been facing as a young emerging artist?

too many things but mostly is about the underestimate of the value in creation life generally.

Any fellow emerging artists you’d like to recommend?

Can I say all? 

What are your hopes for the future?

To live long and happily.

Get in touch
with Poon Kan Chi

www.poonkanchi.com
Instagram: @poon_kanchi
Facebook: Poonkanchi