Coco Ma

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

Working in the studio feels like navigating a labyrinth. Materials come to me through intuition and chance encounters. They find me because we share something inherent, yet as they pass through me — like water flowing through a tunnel and becoming something new — their differences are magnified by the resonance of the familiar. This transformation creates an emulsified reality, where boundaries blur and forms shift. Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and (s)he’s not the same (wo)man.” Yet every morning, when I step into the studio, cut plywood into shapes, or mold toilet paper into irregular forms, I feel as if I am stepping into the same river again and again. The river remains because there is no shore; everything is one. I am part of its current, drifting and morphing with time. In my studio, there is no fixed point of anchorage — only flowing water that rises and falls with the passage of time. In this continuous drift, I sift through fragments of my life: memories stretching from my adolescence in Beijing to my adulthood in the U.S., emotions that resist reconciliation, fears both rational and intuitive, and relationships with my mother, grandparents, and those who inhabit my past and present. My studio is where time converges, where I step into the same river endlessly, though its depths can never be fully grasped. I become the river. My practice resists singularity, refusing to rely on any fixed form or material....

Artwork