Cicadas #2 brings together two interests that have coursed through Genevieve Chua’s practice: nature and the wild, as well as the intertwining relationship between sound and image. Part of Chua’s ‘Unnatural History Drawings’, the shaped canvas takes as its starting point, the extensive collection of natural history drawings that were commissioned by William Farquhar in the early 19th century. With an abiding interest to explore abstraction in painting, the work also incorporates the ultrasound image as a means to probe the relationship between sound and vision, and how sensorial experiences can translate across one other. Chua’s use of the ultrasound gestures towards the realm of possibility of what lies beyond the range of human sensory detection, as made realisable by science and technology. Cicada #2 evokes the shape of the insect delicately unfolding its damp wings after its period of dormancy, a phase and life ‘lived’ buried underground for 17 years for some species of cicadas. Waking as a thunderous force after dormancy, the cicadas collectively produce a deafening song during the mating season, only to die shortly after. Sex and impending demise are conjoined in the cicada song, a sonic cry that finds translation into the visual realm through the ultrasound pattern on the painting’s surface that is rendered based on the cicadas’ mating call. Genevieve Chua (b. 1984, Singapore) is a visual artist who works primarily through abstraction. Selected solo exhibitions include “Rehearsals for the Wilful” (Manila, 2016); “Parabola” (Singapore, 2014); and “Cicadas Cicadas” (Los Angeles, 2014). She has also participated in the Singapore Biennale (2011), and was the Young Artist Award in 2012 conferred by the National Arts Council, Singapore.
