┐ Ting Cheng └

@ Ting Cheng, Icy Yoga Lesson, 2012

@ Ting Cheng, Where is my home, 2009

excerpt from an interview by Alexandra Plesner, from Dazed Digital

Dazed Digital: Your images give the impression of a dreamer, trying to escape this asylum called life. Why does this concept fascinate you so much?
Ting Cheng: As human beings, we learn from playing, we gain experience through trying. While I am not particularly good at planning, I am the queen of playing and trying. Inside the game, we are the controller. We press and release. We continuously select and restart, trying to break through the barriers that we encounter. The game will never be over, because despite all the set-backs that we’re facing, we will always continue playing and seeking those little victories. I indeed wish I could transform myself from a traveller, an outsider and a dreamer into a present experience maker.

DD: What was your first passion and how does this passion manifest itself today?
Ting Cheng: Being an outsider is really essential for me. It is the main inspiration for my work. The feeling of alienation urges me to step aside from my own body. It drives me to express this inner desire of exploring and discovering.

DD: What does photography mean to you?
Ting Cheng: I am a day dreamer and a visual thinker, so I turn to photography to communicate my feelings, thoughts, dreams and desires. I use photography to expose and document the absurdity and oddness of everyday life. Photography for me, is almost a way to prove my very existence. It is a way to escape from an ordinary and mundane reality, replacing it with a new reality.

DD: To look at your picture gives hope that the door to fairyland actually exists. How important is escaping reality for you personally and as a professional?
Ting Cheng: The image of the world has existed within our consciousness and cognition. If I am not satisfied with the reality I find myself in, I can reorder and reshape the map of the world through my imagination. Even more, I can build up a new reality. My work gives me an alternative to rethink and question the possibility of space and the relationship between our bodies and the objects that surround me.

More of Ting’s work here