Cleo Ding

As a second-generation Chinese immigrant born in Australia, Cleo Ding uses glitch aesthetics to explore self-identification and diasporic identity in the post-digital era. By abstracting 3D body scans made via smartphone into ‘digital skin’, Cleo investigates how othering and objectification might contextualise preconceived understandings of the self, and a strategic sense of self-representation.

Her expanded digital practice encompasses 3D sculpture, game design, animation, collage, and screen-based installation to challenge dominant narratives of identity. Cleo delves into the ways in which these narratives are shaped by systemic privilege and cultural loss through the exploration of alternative forms of self-representation. ‘Glitch’ functions both conceptually—to understand lived diasporic experience —and technically in image production, its representational form rooted in self-portraiture.