Telisa Cho

Born in Zhuhai, China. Artist working with photography, collage, installation and the photobook.

I think of photography as an organ more direct than the mouth and brighter than the eye — a medium for the soul that connects the inner and the outer. Marcel Duchamp taught me that art is made not only for the retina but for the mind.

My work looks for the truths hidden beneath the surface and tries to set them on the table gently. I grew up in a place where quiet resignation was common and a screaming child was not welcome, and I learned to handle anxiety without extreme gestures. Shy, and used to wearing a mask, I let that temperament seep into the work: it tends to be indirect and fragmentary.

Once I realised that a photograph can keep a memory — and even change it, creating a new, subjective truth — I could not stop. For me a photograph is not only a flat image; it can become a sculpture, an installation or a book. I work with time, nature and personal memory, and with conjectures both universal and private.