Chi Ho Wong

Identity has always been the focus of my work. I am interested in how we define ourselves. Influenced by Descartes' idea of dualism, I worked on the topic by going through the body and the mind. Our appearance can look very alike, but our thoughts can be greatly distinct, and vice versa. We are used to altering our appearance by makeup and building our personality by idols. These imitation practices blur our own characteristics. In my works, I aim to introduce the concept of clarity and truthfulness, and hence define who I am.

The series of photographs presents the elements that are used to identify human beings. They are the body parts and personal data we all have, which are common to all of us but unique at the same time. The work is inspired by the fundamental theorem of arithmetic in mathematics, which states that every integer greater than '1' is either a prime or a product of primes, and the representation is unique. Similarly, different parts of our body compose us as a person explicitly and unambiguously.