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# Project Description Project: Frogusus Wing See Wincy Cheng Summary Final work At the beginning of my degree, I used the idea of dolls as emotional vessels. I saw them as elegant, silent, and familiar entities I could project onto without needing to fully reveal myself. They became surrogates for things I couldn’t articulate directly. Growing up, I often felt like a disruption to the symbolic order - intense, emotional - too strange to fit in. I learned to protect myself by creating art, it became a way to build a world to which I could point to and say “These feelings belong there”. I painted them physically and digitally, using these vessels as my emotional exorcists. I began sculpting in clay, then moved into digital scanning, modelling, and 3D printing—watching them get taller, gain number, and presence. My practice still begins from that impulse: to make visible the inner architecture of emotional experience, and to speak to the people who feel estranged by the surface of things. I don’t want to explain my internal world, I want to externalise it, to sculpt my thoughts into something others can sense present. My process often begins with touch, using tangible forms such as clay, paint, or found materials. This stage is messy, it is a ritualistic struggle translating the visceral into the deliberate form of an idea - I refuse to work with the medium alone - instead I use absolutely everything. Withstanding an accidental injury to my finger weaving “Web of Chains”, I sealed my flesh in resin and adorned the piece with it. I’ve always felt the affirmative difference in Francis Bacon’s raw language should be illuminated - “All painting is an accident. But it’s also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve.” I bring the same determination of choice when bringing my work in 2D and 3D virtual environments, where scale, shapes, and forms distort in surreal ways. This fluid movement between dimensions allows my ideas to travel and reconnect, forming a rhythmic loop between touch, translation, and return. In my art, I often create through proxy by manifesting visual doubles that allow me to confront personal fears and anxieties at one remove. My practice mirrors Freud’s idea of the uncanny: the unpleasant feeling when something familiar suddenly becomes unfamiliar. Freud once described this moment: “the double has become a thing of terror, just as... the gods turned into demons” (Freud, 1919, p.235). Referencing that unsettling reversal when something you’ve created by investing yourself stares back at you as an other. This shaped the way I approach these silent self-portraits. They no longer only function as an expression of emotions or identities, but as mirrors that reflect me back in unfamiliar ways, revealing parts of myself I have not yet realised. Creating my first ‘baby’ sculpture marked a turning point in Year 2. I slowly developed an unexpected maternal attachment to the sculpture, making me question whether I was just the artist who created these beings or if it’s something more entangled. When I Digitally sculpted the first Frogusus, I noticed that the act of automated production in plastic introduced a distance that was worth exploring. My work passes over the flux present when an idea passes through different states of being - when something hand-held, even physically nurtured becomes intangible, then returns again in commodified form. That moment reframed my relationship to them, not just as permanent creations, but as strange ephemeral echoes of myself and my audience, their identity— a fragile multiplicity. Luce Irigaray’s concept of mimesis gave me a political and aesthetic strategy to work through this. She writes about “submitting women to stereotypical views... to call the views themselves into question” (Irigaray, 1985, p.76). My use of the feminine uncanny: the overly adorned figure, the mirrored body, the doll-face as decoration draws directly from this tactic. I mimic visual codes of femininity until they start to unravel. In one digital painting,I depicted a female doll figure wearing a gown made from duplicates of her own face. I explore the notion of the feminine uncanny as an evental site where difference is extracted from repetition. A recent development in my practice extends from the Frogusus—a series of 3D models combining doll-like faces with animalistic and gential forms. These works reflect a fictional logic: what might a Frogusus learn about humanity through scraps of online data? Influenced by NieR: Automata and its machine lifeforms who imitate human behaviour without understanding it, they attempt to reconstruct desire, body, and identity through symbolic repetition. Referencing John Searle’s Chinese Room experiment (1980), I want to question whether the manipulation of symbols related to pleasure and embodiment can be conducive to real understanding or experience. These creatures I create can perform knowledge, but do they remain outside of it? The project also draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly the phallus as a symbol of lack and incompletion (Lacan, 1977). These beings are empty signifiers thrown far and deep into my production cycle, skipping touch and fast-forwarding through software sculpting into 3D printed moulds for mass-production, commodified and uncannily appealing. Their adorable little faces disrupt the organic discomfort associated with genital imagery. Their gestures are borrowed and their desires are inherited. I use surreal humour to expose these artificial figures that mimic what they cannot feel, navigating human absurdity without fully entering it. As my creative practices continue to evolve, I’m interested in experimenting how my creatures and constructed identities might move beyond their static forms. I expand into holographic technologies and game-building platforms by developing interactive environments where viewers experience feedback when interacting with my work. At the beginning of my degree, I used the idea of dolls as emotional vessels. I saw them as elega... College Central Saint Martins Course BA (Hons) Fine Art Graduation year 2025 “Frogusus” seeks to reimagine the artistic studio as an event in ectogenesis, an external birth. The little sculptural creatures were free in my imagination until they had to be radically brought into existence, marked and documented, staged and objectified. The project deals with the metamorphic backpropagation of protesting bodies, into obedient organs (the miniature charms, infantilised, commodified). Final work 3 frogusus 3D print mixed medium sculpture with AI generated background using Photoshop I used AI and Photoshop to place my sculptures into abstract environments, experimenting how surface and texture behave when re-entering the digital. The Frogusi’s hand-made, furred, and spiked bodies are contrasted with slick, airbrushed simulations. 2 frogusus 3D print mixed medium sculpture with AI generated background using Photoshop The AI flattens the sculptural detail—making them appear embalmed, weightless, like icons or interfaces. This tension between tactile object and virtual polish reflects my interest in the aesthetic of discomfort. The images no longer document the work—they fictionalise it. They become new creatures in their own right. Project Frogusus: The Mimicry and Double Entendre (Side View) In this series of 3D sculpted models, I reimagined the Frogusi in absurd, erotic costumes that embody the play of visual double entendre. Three Frogusi models wear hybrid “cock” outfits combined with body parts of chicken and one Frogusi model wears a hybrid “pussy”cat costume with cat ears and tail. The works explore how language like internet slang becomes confusing for beings without embodied knowledge. Inspired by Nier: Automata’s Machine Lifeforms (Square Enix, 2023) these Frogusi mimic the procreative function of bodies without truly understanding them. They learn through scraps of data, not through sensation or experience. They know the symbols of desire, but not its affect. Since they were never born—only printed—they lack the warmth of a womb, the wetness of blood, the rhythm of a heartbeat. Their costumes become faulty performances of intimacy: comical, uncanny, and a little sad. What begins as a joke becomes a mirror of alienation. These creatures are trying to participate in something they cannot access. Paradoxically, in a fashion described by Dennet’s intentional stance (Dennet, 1997), perhaps it is enough for these creatures to be treated as though their performance is sufficient - especially through interacting with the audience. I ask my viewers whether it is possible that some level of their own emotional investment leaks into the digital forms themselves and takes on a primitive life of its own. Project Frogusus: The Mimicry and Double Entendre (Top View) Research and process “The Finding of Frogusus” Open Studio March 19th 2025 In “The Finding of Frogusus” I wanted to reenact a first encounter with the fantastical creature, a biblical experience referencing The Finding of Moses (Exodus 2:1–10), where an infant is discovered floating in a basket, vulnerable yet chosen as a future saviour.. The spider-like web made of chains in the background is also aimed to constellate the influence of Louise Bourgeois on my creative inspiration for this installation especially with her work “Maman.” Once again, I wanted to remind the viewers that I “gave birth” to these creatures and they are crossing the border of painting into our world. Share this project “Frogusus” seeks to reimagine the artistic studio as an event in ectogenesis, an external birth. The little sculptural creatures were free in my imagination until they had to be radically brought into existence, marked and documented, staged and objectified. The project deals ... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Sexuality Identity Beyond Human Being Human Body Community Craft & Process Gender Futures Digital Experiences Play Materiality
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