Ai Wei Chloe Looi
About
Ai Wei Chloe Looi (b. 1998) is a Malaysian-born visual communicator, artist, and writer who combines various art languages within her works. She integrates current events and experimental methods, such as drawing and narrative within her works. Looi enjoys infusing her personal experiences, pop culture and natural organics in practical and written contexts. She studies Visual Communication (Illustration) at the Royal College of Art.
Looi is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and London, United Kingdom.
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Statement
What is interoception?
For such a complex subject, the physiological term splits into various meanings of the internal self, emotional awareness, spatial awareness and body awareness. They help us to identify, respond and engage with our inner selves. These concepts influence our habitual decisions, thoughts and other conscious/unconscious variables that transpire within our mind and body.
My practice focuses on four keywords: emotional, spatial, physical and narrative. Each word explores an area of the process, material and form of distribution (such as public activities or gathering primary investigations through personal journal-making). However, the last term is a denouement where it encapsulates all gathered research into an outcome.
By developing these topics (through different methods), the relationship between myself, others and the world has grown significantly. These works gave birth to my current understanding and implementation of an intricate matter within the makings of my practice, both conceptually and physically.
The Emotion Journal
The first mode of research is emotional awareness. For thirty-one days, I recorded my thoughts in a journal using poetry, writing, illustration and photography to express my abstracted mind on paper. The juxtaposing effects of control and variegated marks produced an irregular rhythm for each day.
Medium: soft pastel, oil pastel and graphite on paper
Practical Bodies Workshop
The second mode of research explores the physical awareness of individuals responding to instructions, environment and other parties in the same area. It was a one-day workshop of five to seven participants that reproduced commands found on a screen. This investigation is to learn about their internal thought-process as they navigate a limited space.
Medium: video
Size: 3 minutes
'A Room' Study
The third mode of research is spatial awareness. This area of outcome is an extended section of physical perception and visualises the sensibilities of space. I used a variety of materials to construct a room of sorts. Some of the journal entries (from the first mode, emotional awareness) inspired the imageries of these created realms.
Medium: Photography, mixed media
Hidden Corners of The Rim-Edged World
A collection of short stories where a flurry of fragmented emotions takes shape in a place called the House. These beings wander the frameworks of their world, tied to an infinite realm of space and time. On their journeys, they confront creatures of many kinds tailored to their natures as they search for their other half as a means to become whole again.
The fourth and final mode of outcome is narrative, which is an amalgamation of all gathered research in this journey of interoceptive studies. This area is an assemblage of my internal self, spatial creation and physical acumen toward the things around me. The book 'Hidden Corners of The Rim-Edged World' is the development of narratives loosely based on my feelings running amok in a world so deep (in our unconscious state) where humans can never reach. It is a place where these feelings are born to live as their selves, and this narrative is their own story to tell.