Creative Macau

Center for Creative Industries

Visual Arts

Chi Mou

Using Chi Mou as his pseudonym, the original name of the artist is Leong Chi Hou. He started drawing since he was two, at when he drew some pictures on the white wall in his house. That wall has become his context in art. Leong was born in China after the reform and Opening Policy and moved to post-colonial Macau. Grew up in a poor family, Leong’s only pleasure was learning the Chinese painting techniques from the television. No guidance and rules, his experiment on the white paper was all about art. After the move, Leong gave in Chinese painting and tried different art media instead. He used lots of art techniques from West and East and found that it was a naive way. Art is not emphasis on techniques but self-exploration. So he began to doubt the purest motives of artist, root, nationality, otherness, and ego. After he comprehended “Orientalism” and studied the possibility of “New Orientalism”, as well as the enlightenment from Takashi Murakami’s art & business, he finally realized that: Art is great, not the artists but Art, as it is not produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure; and it neither increases nor diminishes.