‘I have something to give you,’ is the title of a work by CC Kua. The “something” in the work is a menacing sea urchin resting on an outstretched palm offered to the viewer. Ha-ha.

**I Have Something to Give You**
2022
Watercolour on paper
21 × 29.7 cm (paper size)

Many of the paintings in the show, and indeed in CC’s practice more generally, are characterised by this same drollness. They are jokes that aren’t particularly funny, whimsies that aren’t particularly whimsical, and nostalgia for memories that aren’t particularly fond. In the present exhibition, a new set of works, spanning three years (2022–2025) and multiple mediums, offer a variety of new “jokes” and propositions for the viewer’s amusement.

A welcoming section of light paintings on canvas offer a good-natured yet languid opening to the show, like a collection of guests idling post-lunch and making torpid jokes and chit-chat in the mid-afternoon heat. A series of paintings promise “something nice” in naive handwriting (like a child gripping a pencil with their fist), but most of the painting is obscured beneath a white wash, with the only colour being the textual promise of something “nice”. Meanwhile, another pair of twins, the ‘Chinese Duck’ and ‘Ang Mo Duck’, consist of two painted icons that each symbolise the concept of “ducks” in Chinese and Western culture, respectively: one, a drawn and halved, spread-eagled duck covered in brown glaze, representing an advertisement for roast duck; and the other, the silhouette of the classic yellow duck that adorns bathtubs the world over. Yes, ha-ha.

**Nice 1**
2025
Acrylic on canvas
15 × 15 cm

**Nice 2**
2025
Acrylic on canvas
10 × 10 cm

**Chinese Duck**
2025
Acrylic on canvas
46 × 33 cm
**Ang Mo Duck (Western)**
2025
Acrylic on canvas
33 × 46 cm

**Today Is Here**, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 84 × 122 cm

‘Tomorrow is coming,’ one painting announces, like the last hiccup of a drunken guest struck by a sudden burst of awareness of their mortality and the passage of time, right before passing out in a golden slumber.

Further along in the show, the visions become slightly more tortured. Laughing, gay faces rendered in black and white start to seem rather sinister. Five drawings in pastel and graphite seem to bring us into an underworld of ‘Hidden Rooms and Secret Doors’ or ‘Hehe Haha Heehee’ where all light has been inverted, yet the normal procession of human affairs carry on. These drawings are made with dark graphite scrubbed onto white paper, with a lighter graphite pencil applied later to create the outlines of figures and shapes appearing out of the black clouds. The drawing scheme seems counterproductive, everything seems to be lit in the wrong direction, and there is the sense of something demonic about the black faces.

**Hidden Rooms & Secret Doors**, 2024, Pastel and pencil on paper, 26 × 36.5 cm (paper size)

**Hehe Haha Heehee**, 2024, Pastel and pencil on paper, 26 × 36.5 cm (paper size)

Some other drawings here seem to show the artist at a pitch of mild psychosis, like the way a child or a cat gets when it’s having too much fun and suddenly starts trying to bite everyone. There is an underbelly of aggression beneath all of the drawings, which, as the artist will tell you, are inspired by her “lived experiences” and “childhood memories” — innocent ruses for the primal, manic energy that suffuses them. A drawing depicting a children’s puppet show taking place outdoors is disturbed by stormy colour and the unsettled expressions of all the figures in the scene. And another one, mysteriously titled ‘Welcome to the land’ shows an evil-looking magician, with hands like eels, a beak like a stork and another, smaller bulb of a face emerging from his head, appear to cast spells on turnip-looking people before him while an upside-down volcano erupts overhead. Welcome to the land!!!

**Yesterday's Show**
2022
Ink and coloured pencil on paper
25 × 25 cm (paper size)

**Welcome To The Land**
2023
Watercolour and ink on paper
21 × 29.7 cm (paper size)

**And**
2025
Watercolour and pencil on paper
25 × 25 cm (paper size)

And so we have a tale of two CC’s, as hinted at by the watercolour painting titled ‘And’, which depicts a pair of conjoined twins drawn in different mediums. At one end of the spectrum of CC’s practice, we have paintings that are like a collection of friendly, idle guests in a sunlit sitting room and which are the sort of paintings that explain how words like “whimsical” and “naive” have attached themselves to descriptions of CC’s art over the years; at the other end, there are drawings that give pause and make you recall all those stories you’ve heard about artists going off their nut. Together, these two ends constitute the duality that is CC. Just as one is about to get taken in by the inviting pastel hues of the first type, the jarring creatures and expressions in the second type jump in and disrupt the mood, leaving one with a rather mixed impression overall. One searches for words and finally settles upon something along the lines of a stunned, ‘Oh, I see… I see.’

And so, to return to the beginning of the text, the artist is waiting for an answer. Will you accept the gift that she is offering to you, this spiked thing conjured up by her hands?

written by ellen lee

Exhibition dates
22 March – 13 April 2025

About the Artist

CC Kua
b. 1991, Sungai Petani, Kedah
based in Kuala Lumpur

CC Kua is a visual artist, educator, and graphic designer currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She works primarily across the mediums of drawing and painting, viewing her art as a tool for provoking thoughts and tickling minds. Her art explores narrative possibilities, often with a twist or a touch of dark humour.

Kua received her Master’s in Fine Arts from Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan, in 2019, and her Bachelor's in Graphic Design and Illustration from The One Academy (conferred by the University of Hertfordshire, UK) in 2013. Including the present exhibition, she has had four solo exhibitions to date, all in Kuala Lumpur: All By Myself (2020, The Back Room), Left A Bit, Right A Bit, Up A Bit, Down A Bit (2019, Lostgens’), and Mosquito Bite (2016, Lostgens’). In 2020, she was an artist-in-residence at the Rimbun Dahan Southeast Asian Art Residency in Kuang, Selangor.