Dialogue across Borders: Angela Su’s Chimeric Antibodies

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Angela Su is adept at a variety of art forms, including ink drawing, human hair embroidery, video art, animation and performance. Graduating from the University of Toronto with her undergraduate training in biochemistry, and then from the Ontario College of Art and Design University with another degree in visual arts, Su’s works have been shaped by the place where she grew up. She transplants a lush, Gothic style of pessimism into a city where people have struggled for survival alongside its hard-earned prosperity. In 2018, Su was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust to create art exploring the complexity of infectious diseases in the transregional project “Contagious Cities.” Her performance-based video was inspired by the outbreak narratives permeating Hong Kong’s two-century-long encounter between two great civilizations. Here, we select one of Angela’s early works, Chimeric Antibodies (2011), which prophetically interrogates arrays of agendas in the time of COVID-19 (Fig. 1). While scientists and the public are still puzzled by the transmission mechanisms of this mysterious virus and in desperate search of effective responses, the artist’s vision is no longer just an expression of scientific knowledge. It is instead a powerful lens through which we collectively reflect on our hope, impotence, and apprehension. The interview is conducted by Harry Yi-Jui Wu of the University of Hong Kong. Aveteran historian of medicine, Wu joins EASTS as a member of the cover team in 2020.

—EASTS Editorial Office

Harry Yi-Jui Wu:

A significant amount of your artwork is related to health and illness. Can you tell me what inspired you to create these pieces?

Angela Su:

I am drawn to creating pseudo-scientific drawings because I was attracted to the fine line between the real and the fictional. Historical and contemporary anatomical drawings seem to provide us with the truth, but in fact they were artistic interpretations of what scientists or medical doctors wanted to highlight.

Later on, I got interested in topics related to mental illness. I am particularly intrigued by symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, disorganized speech patterns, and their distorted sense of reality. The seemingly unintelligible word salads are coded to a point that they sound almost poetic. John Nash’s ability to crack codes and to see connections between different facts are also fascinating. These are curiously the things that artists like myself would want to achieve—to construct different world views, different modes of communication and existence.

I began to look into the history of hysteria, Charcot’s photo documentation of his female patients at Salpêtrière, SPK (Socialist Patients’ Collective), and the validity of psychiatry. It is indeed very sad and infuriating to see how science and politics are often partners in crime. Science is somehow used to help establish social norms and maintain the status quo, and social misfits and political dissidents today are still sent to mental institutions. I guess I am more interested in the social constructionist concept of illness rather than the medical notion of disease.

Figure 1.

The original artwork by Angela Su that is granted to be made into the cover illustration of this issue.

Wu:

More specifically, the Chimeric Antibodies series was produced almost a decade ago. Can you tell us about the context in which you undertook the project? While facing an unknown disease like COVID-19, we tend to imagine the ways in which we enhance ourselves to fight it. For example, we develop drugs that kill the germs; we grow immunity by developing vaccines. These antibodies in your paintings look complicated and monstrous. Can you elaborate on how you imagine these antibodies?

Su:

These are a series of large-scale drawings around 170 × 75 cm each in size. I was thinking about J. D. Radcliffe’s book, titled I Am Joe’s Body (1986), in which some cells are described as cities with rigid dictatorship, while white blood cells are described as police who keep out undesirables. This book...