Gallery Exit is pleased to present The Hartford Girl and Other Stories, a solo exhibition by Hong Kong artist Angela Su.

Widely known for her series of drawings depicting intricate hybrid forms of humans, flora, and insects that stylistically reference classical medical sketches, Angela Su has been continually interested in exploring not only the perception and imagery of the body, but also, through her performance-based works such as One-Woman-Apartment (2008) and Angela Su, 2010 (2010), the tension of the artist's dualistic state of being when under physical endangerment or distress.

In her latest work, The Hartford Girl and Other Stories, Su further explores this theme of the felt experience of the body. Stemming from a series of discussions with cultural historian Sander L. Gilman and curator Valerie C. Doran within the framework of the 'Stigmatics' project, Su brings her focus to the spectrum of self-mutilation practices in contemporary culture, and the complexities of meaning that reside within the body and the psyche.

Comprised of a video and six photographic prints, The Hartford Girl and Other Stories is a multi-layered, allegorical narrative whose central image documents the intensive process of creation of a complex, inkless tattoo composed of 39 lines or 'slashes' of text written freehand on the artist's back. The tattoo references the Biblical account of the number of lashes received by Jesus prior to his crucifixion. The literal narratives in both the tattoo and the video are collages created by the artist, one consisting of fragments of prayers and the other of juxtaposed 'clips' of real and fictional experiences, song lyrics, news reports and random facts. The visual and literal 'stories' of prayer, pain, self-expression, desperation, detachment (and other things) being told in Su's work exist on many levels of encounter, but reside ultimately in the question of whose voice is actually heard.