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Ay Tjoe’s Meaning of Life

Indonesian artist Christine Ay Tjoe has been a rising star in Asia for two decades. But her first U.S. show, at White Cube, offers a comprehensive view of how she grapples with the theme of grief after the death of her father.

Christine Ay Tjoe
Christine Ay Tjoe has already spent two decades as a rising star in Asia, where her work has been a mainstay of the Hong Kong auctions. Photo: Eva Herzog
Marion Maneker
July 8, 2025

One of the great themes of abstract expressionism was that artists could depict deep and strong emotions in a visual language without reference to the physical world. Paired with this idea was the popular image of the artist as a taciturn and complicated person who kept their feelings bottled up inside. No figure better captured this duality than Jackson Pollock, the hard-drinking, paint-flinging artist who recklessly killed himself and a passenger in a car crash because he couldn’t come to grips with his inner turmoil.