Hidden Space is delighted to present Polymorphs by Natalie Chiu, the third recipient of our annual Hidden Space Award. In Polymorphs, Natalie Chiu dives into her inner psyche to create unique life forms, isolated and stripped of narrative content. Her drawings are both fantastical, imaginary and yet also strangely both of this world and our subconscious. Here are creatures or perhaps specimens – it’s hard to define what exactly we are seeing here. Whatever they are, they straddle an ambiguous line between the known and the unknown, between fascination and repulsion. We are invited into a space of captured forms, unmoving, equivocal, silent. Individual elements seem recognizable, a claw, sprouting hair, an animal skin texture, even an occasional mammalian eye, yet the whole doesn’t correspond to any known earthbound creature. However, we don’t get to see them easily, no drawing is immediately visible in the space. Again, there is an ambiguity at play, an allusion to something of the clinical, the lab, of something that might need to be contained or that is invisible to the human eye, but also of the voyeur. Take a peep.

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Natalie CHIU (HK) received her BA in Fine Art from RMIT Australia and HKAS in 2019. Chiu’s practice is informed by fantasy genres and revolves around intricate, finely detailed drawing, where alien-like creatures and forms emerge out of painstaking applications of shape and texture. Polymorphs is her first solo exhibition.