Angela Su received a degree in biochemistry in Canada before pursuing visual arts. Su’s works investigate the perception and imagery of the body, through metamorphosis, hybridity and transformation. Her research-based works explore the interrelations between our state of being and then advancement of technology. Central to these projects are video essays that weave together fiction and facts. Archival photographs, prints and film footages are systematically used to create a realm that merges reality and fantasy. With focus on the history of medical science, her works question the dominant biomedical discourse, and contemplate the impact of technology on the past, present and future.

About the work:
Su’s video work Mesures et Démesures begins with photos of lunatic asylums, Jean-Martin Charcot’s patients affected with hysteria, and Cesare Lombroso’s archetypal criminals. Charcot used photography as a tool in his classification and diagnosis of hysteria, a socially constructed disease that led to the misuse of medical care and unjustified discrimination. On the other hand, Cesare Lombroso who belonged to the Italian school of anthropological criminology, suggested that criminals were distinguished from non-criminals by multiple physical anomalies. In such cases the human body’s measurements became intrusive and inescapable and a justification of judgement and condemnation.

The video questions the construction of the ‘norm’ and subtly prompts the audience to contemplate the political abuse of psychiatry, such as the practice of incarceration of political dissidents in mental hospitals, and the attempt of social and individual control through psychiatry. Madness is the disease affecting anyone who lives in his or her own world, anyone who has an opinion which is different from others. Collective madness is sanity. Whether these people pose real danger or not depends on one’s perspective: social and political norms derived from science and conventions, the majority’s moral power and hierarchical power relations that are all constantly in flux.

Angela Su has participated in “Sala10” (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico, 2020); “Meditations in an Emergency” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2020); “Contagious Cities” (Commissioned work by Wellcome Trust, at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, 2019); “Woven” (curated section of Frieze London, 2019); “Artists' Film International” (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2019); “Pro(s)thesis” (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, 2017); “The 2nd CAFAM Biennale: The Invisible Hand” (CAFA Art Museum, China, 2014); “17th Biennale of Sydney” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 2010). Her work has been collected by CAFA Art Museum, China; Kadist Art Foundation, France and USA; M+, Hong Kong and Royal Bank of Scotland, Malaysia. Angela Su represents Hong Kong at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022.