Cheong Kiet Cheng – Blue Bird

Cheong Kiet Cheng’s seventh solo exhibition, 'Blue Bird' (6 Sep – 3 Oct 2025), presents paintings that act as a personal memoir, chronicling two decades shaped by illness, struggle, and renewal. Drawing inspiration from Maurice Maeterlinck’s tale The Blue Bird, in which a brother and his ailing sister embark on a search for hope, Cheong reimagines the story through the eyes of a guide leading her children towards light and safety. Her creative process is deeply informed by her lived experience with schizophrenia, which resurfaced during the vulnerable period following the birth of her daughters. She approaches the condition without stigma, seeing it instead as a muse filtered through her beliefs. As she reflects, “If the illness I have is the result of the influence of my past karma, then perhaps this suffering has been my teacher.” Cheong has received numerous awards, including the UOB Painting of the Year (Malaysia) in 2018, the Creative M50 Awards in Shanghai (2016), the Nanjing International Art Festival Competition in China (2015), and the Watercolor Category at the Tanjong Public Limited Company competition in Kuala Lumpur (2006). In 2018, she was awarded the UOB-Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Artists Residency Programme, spending two months in Japan developing her practice. #cheongkietcheng #weilinggallery #weilingcontemporary #malaysianart #art #artists #contemporaryart #contemporaryartinmalaysia #contemporarymalaysianart #artcollecting #modernart #artexhibition #artgallery