The following text is the full (abridged) interview that I initially submitted to ILHAM Gallery for publication in their ILHAM Art Show catalogue. Due to word count constraints, I had to cut off a chunk of it at the end, but I still think it’s funny enough to republish in full somewhere!

The show opened last Tuesday, and it’s very wow — my thoughts on that soon. The rest of my essays (aside from CC, I also wrote on the works of Azzaha Ibrahim, Hasanul Isyraf Idris, Sharon Chin, and Yeoh Choo Kuan) can be found at the ILHAM website here, and in their soon-to-be-published exhibition catalogue.

CC Kua’s studio at 3 A.M.

The work CC’s presented here is perhaps the simplest and the most opaque one of the show. It began with a set of new colour pencils. The more she used them, the shorter they get, though not all at the same rates. As she watched them “grow up” (or rather, grow down) at increasingly uneven lengths, she started to feel bad for the less-used ones. In contemporary parlance, you might call her an empath.

With Everybody Has A Chance, CC wanted to create a work that minimised her role as an artist as much as possible. After all, it was her own artistic vision that prevented some of the colour pencils from fulfilling their teleological purpose as a colour pencil. The work’s premise is simple: to use up all the colour pencils in her set until they reach the same length as the shortest and most-used one, which is the black colour pencil. By this logic, the colour she least enjoys using will receive the most prominence by taking up the most space. However, as you’ll discover, this apparently well-intentioned gesture can also be taken the wrong way.

The following conversation has been edited for publication.

Ellen Lee

CC Kua

Me: So, Faber Castell?

CC: I bought these colour pencils during my college years — just randomly la, I didn’t even think about the brand. I just needed colour pencils. And I’ve been using them ever since. I’ve been wanting to do this work for a very long time, like since three years ago. I was looking at this box of colour pencils and thinking, how come I used the black one so much? Black always remained the shortest. I felt bad for all the other colours.

So you won’t be using black in the final work then. The black pencil is the benchmark and you have to get all the other colour pencils to that length.

Yes, yes, correct. I thought the work and the concept are so simple, but I find it quite hard to explain it to people. I talked to my mom about this work and she was like Hmmmmmm. Hmm.

How come you chose to propose this for the ILHAM Art Show? It has a very simple outcome, pure colours, when normally you do quite detailed works.

Yes, normally I do drawings with forms, shapes, characters, stories. The more I practice art, the more inspired I am by artists like Martin Creed, David Shrigley, and Andy Warhol. I also enjoy looking at pictures from Marc Chagall and David Hockney. My studies in Taiwan helped push my thinking further on whether art should only be about form, expression, and content. You can see a lot of my character in my previous drawings, but maybe not so much in this work. Maybe in a more indirect way.

If people just saw the work displayed as is, without your name or an artist statement, they might not even know it’s by you.

Yes, I think that’s quite good. Artists sometimes try to own a visual style too much. But I try not to be so protective over my style. Because sometimes I also get bored of it la. Artists have to take one step back. You don’t always have to tell people that it’s your artwork, you don’t need to have a particular style. With this work, I tried to minimise artistic intervention; I’m just a medium to help the colour pencils show themselves.

You used the black colour pencil to make proper drawings, which is why it’s so short. But now you’re using the rest to simply colour. Don’t you think you’re treating them unequally?

When I thought, oh, how do I make them shorter? Maybe do something like my usual drawings? Mm, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to do either. I wanted to show them just as themselves. So I thought that by using them up in a single block of colour each until they reached the height of the black colour pencil, this would be a more powerful way to show off their colours. When you look at one big block of colour as opposed to a detailed drawing, it’s the block that allows you to focus on the colours. If the final visual had a form or story to it, you wouldn’t focus on the colours. You’d be trying to understand what I’m trying to say, as the artist.

Normally the colours would be in service of you, but now you’re in service of them.

Yes, yes, that’s right! Wow, now it sounds very fancy. Say that again. Write that down. Very good.

First, the colour pencils are in service of your vision —

Yes, they’re like my maid.

But now, you are in service of them.

Now, I am their maid.

I think this work is pretty badass la. I mean it’s badass ’cause it’s very… low effort?

[CC laughs]

Like, it’s straightforward.

The execution is quite easy, but the thought process is there. I actually consider a lot of things while making it, like whether I want to colour methodically or in a more free, impulsive way.

It’s difficult to remove yourself as an artist.

Yes, to me it’s easier to make my usual drawings and paintings. Those come more naturally. Because I don’t like to make decisions, but with this work, I feel like I have to make a lot of decisions. I’m not trying to be a badass. I’m like a sweet little girl. But I like badass stuff.

I think you don’t need to justify your work by saying, like, “I deserve to be selected for the ILHAM Art Show because I’m a skilled artist, it’s a detailed work, it’s a long process, I worked very hard.” The confidence required to propose such an idea is also part of the work. It’s part of the feeling of the work.

Thank you. Please do something fun for the essay! Do whatever you want. But we get to check right?!

Er… OK, I’ll send it to you before I send it to ILHAM…

So nice of you.

I was thinking that I could just reprint this conversation. Because you have a strong personality; your personality is very embedded into your works. When I was reading your proposal, I thought that ILHAM should just reprint it exactly as you wrote it. A lot of artists make great works but maybe they’re not very good at talking, or their personality is buried deep inside them. So writers have to draw it out of them when they write their essays. But for your text…

Yeah, you can make it very surface but very deep like that.

Er… What? Anyway, I want to use your words. I don’t want to write too much. I’ll compile it, but I like the way you express yourself.

Thank you. So is this interview over yet?

I have one last thing I wanted to ask you. You say you want to let these unused colour pencils shine —

Oh, this is a very good phrase!

Shine?

To let the unused colour pencils shine…

So I wanted to ask you a stupid question. What about the other artists who didn’t get selected for the ILHAM Art Show?

LOL WTF!

Why don’t you let them shine?

[Laughter] That’s so epic… Like hang them up on the walls?!

Or frame all the artworks that didn’t get selected in the same way you’re planning to frame your colour pencil works.

Wow, that’s so wrong! But so cool… You should have applied for the show. “Why don’t I let them shine?” My God.

In your artist statement for the show, you wrote: ‘I would like to frame all the coloured papers and the equally short colour pencils. One frame for each of them. You can already hear them saying, “Today is my day!”’ But have you ever thought about the other artists for whom today is not their day??? Have you ever thought about them?

No!! Oh my God, this is so epic. Why are you so clever? So politically incorrect! What about others, let them shine, hang them there on the wall… You know this guy, Maurizio Cattellan?

The toilet guy? Banana guy?

Yeah, he hung someone before…

He duct-taped them—

Yeah, he duct-taped them. [Referring to Cattelan’s work A Perfect Day (1999) in which he taped his gallerist, Massimo De Carlo, to the gallery’s walls in Milan.] Anyway, my God, Ellen you’re so evil. I love this. My God, yes you’re right, I let my colour pencils shine but not real humans! [More laughter, wiping tears from her eyes.] Oh my God, so funny. What a night.

So you like really funny artists.

The badass kind. But I feel like I’m not a badass. A little bit la, but cannot too much. Oh my God, can you include that question in the essay? Write down, “Why don’t you let the other artists shine?” and then write my answer as just, like, “Omg, lololol, hahaha.” You had such a serious face when you asked it, I was laughing so much.

Don’t you ever think about the other artists whose opportunities you took? You’re like the black colour pencil, you know. They’re all still waiting in the box. It’s so dark in there. Three hundred and sixty artists applied.

And how many got accepted?

Thirty.

So that’s like ten percent right?

I don’t know, I can’t do maths.