Blue Bird

Cheong Kiet Cheng’s seventh solo exhibition, ‘Blue Bird’, opens at Wei-Ling Gallery with paintings that serve as a personal memoir chronicling two decades shaped by illness, struggle, and renewal. Rooted in the long arc of lived experience, each work still carries the immediacy of the present moment. This exhibition situates her practice within a broader conversation on art as a conduit for healing, extending her inquiry into the entanglement of memory and resilience.

Drawing from Maurice Maeterlinck’s tale, ‘The Blue Bird’, in which a brother and his ailing sister embark on a quest for hope, Cheong reimagines the story through the eyes of a guide leading her children towards light and safety. This vision comes through her ink and pen drawings that unfold in layered, accumulative lines. Each mark building upon the last, fashioning a living field of connections that are organic and unpredictable. Echoing life itself.
Her creative process is shaped by her experience with schizophrenia which resurfaced during the vulnerable periods following the birth of her daughters. She meets the condition without stigma, regarding it as a muse, filtered through her beliefs. “If the illness I have is the result of the influence of my past karma, then perhaps this suffering has been my teacher,” she reflects. Carrying that weight into her studio and letting it find form.

In this light, the works in ‘Blue Bird’ become acts of transfiguration. Turning hardships into a visual lexicon that resists the familiar framing of illness as something to be conquered, choosing instead to embrace it as a source of learning. She treats it as a force that shapes and refines, tuning her to the thresholds between vulnerability and endurance. Together the paintings chart her journey back to herself, each one marking breakthroughs forged by years of treatment, daily meditation, and disciplined inner cultivation.

‘Blue Bird’ is featured at Wei-Ling Gallery from 6 – 27 September 2025. Wei-Ling Gallery is located at No 8, Jalan Scott, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Admission hours are Tuesday – Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 10am – 5pm. Exhibition is open by appointment only. For appointments and further assistance, please contact +60322601106 or e-mail siewboon@weiling-gallery.com

ABOUT THE ARTIST
CHEONG KIET CHENG (B. 1981)
Cheong Kiet Cheng’s paintings have consistently highlighted the relationship between humans and nature. Although the situations she creates seem to convey over-riding feelings of beauty and love, the underlying elements of tension between the human and animal figures emphasise that imperfection is unavoidable. Yet, one is still likely to find a tranquillity within each of her works – an effect she achieves through a unique method of meditative, repetitive forms. As an artist, she is most interested in sharing positive energy through her work, rather than conforming to the conventional aesthetics in art.

Cheong Kiet Cheng is unrestricted by any particular medium, choosing instead to experiment with materials – from acrylic paints in earlier bodies of work to black ink in her latest series – which allows her to evolve into new discoveries. The romantic quality of her work is a direct result of her own personal feelings towards nature, drawing much of her inspiration from philosophy, literature, poetry, music and theatrical drama.

She has won several major awards and prizes over the years, including the main prize at the 2018 UOB Painting of the Year (Malaysia) competition; Creative M50 Awards in Shanghai, China (2016); Nanjing International Art Festival Competition in China (2015); Water Color Category at Tanjong Public Limited Company, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2006). Cheong Kiet Cheng was also the recipient of the UOB-Fukuoka Asian Art Museum’s Artists Residency Programme in 2018, where she spent two months expanding on her practice in Japan.