Artist Jeffrey Cheung Invites the World to Join Him on a Journey of Fun, Freedom, and Self Expression
Through what started as a quest for self-discovery, Jeffrey Cheung found that he has a knack for helping others to fully embrace themselves. The vehicle for Cheung's message is art—often delivered these days on the underside of skateboards, although also entirely comfortable on canvases mounted within the walls of prized gallery spaces. Creating curvaceous characters poised within warm and humorous compositions, Cheung openly explores identity, and celebrates an all-encompassing spectrum of bodies, sexualities, and genders. In doing so, he stands as not only an extraordinary artistic force but also an empowering voice for LGBTQ and BIPOC communities the world over.
The Multi-Faceted Creative
Jeffrey Cheung was born in Castro Valley, CA in 1989. The young creative enjoyed a triad of passions—art, skateboarding, and music—and in deciding to pursue the former, majored in art at UC Santa Cruz. At first, exploring his own identity through art, Cheung developed a distinctive style of figurative representation that explored queer sexuality and rejected heteronormative codes. With a blossoming art career already taking shape, Cheung and his partner, Gabriel Ramirez, formed a band called Unity, which would, in turn, transform into an umbrella project that finally brought that aforementioned triad together. The first transition of the Unity brand was an expansion into publishing. Unity Press brought Cheung's art to new audiences while allowing the creative pair to grow their inclusive offering through playful zines.
In 2017, Unity branched further with the formation of Unity skateboards. Initially, Cheung created hand-painted boards for his broader friendships circle, but growth became inevitable propelled by demand for the eye-catching and positivity-radiating decks. As Cheung's audience swelled, his motives were clarified, and he increasingly depicted not only queerness as he experienced it himself but a wider representation of queer and trans communities and people of color. In doing so, Cheung and Ramirez created a welcoming space for every skateboarding enthusiast—especially those that might ever have felt marginalized by an otherwise self-expression-driven sport.
Jeffrey Cheung Hand Embellished Pancake Skateboard at Baer & Bosch
A Further Blossoming to the Self-Expression in Skateboarding
Although Unity Skateboarding soon moved into printing Cheung's artwork onto their decks, the artist continues to hand decorate boards where he can and often adds unique and expressive embellishments to limited edition printed deck runs. Cheung and Ramirez have also taken their mission directly to the people, holding queer skate events at various international locations, from New York to Paris. Cheung sites his own youth as inspiration for this project, describing skateboarding as his primary formative outlet—but noting that the absence of queer voices within the skateboarding community stifled his confidence to come out as a teen. He explains: “A big part of why I started Unity was so the next generation of kids could see that there were queer and trans people in skateboarding and that they could hopefully find inspiration to be themselves.”
Energized by the presence of queer and trans people in the fashion industry, the Unity duo decided to collaborate with Gucci in 2019. The shoot, set in Paris—at Gucci's request following previous Paris-based Unity events—featured friends and followers of Cheung and Ramirez, sporting Gucci attire while riding on Unity decks. Queer community photographers Dona Diamant and Marilou Chabert captured the fun and freedom-infused images, delivering a campaign that united high fashion with the celebratory breakdown of gender conventions and binaries.
Making Space for Greater Inclusivity
Actively addressing a lack of diversity or representation wherever they see it, Cheung and Ramirez have used their publishing platform to engage new audiences at Printed Matter's Art Book Fairs, and donation-based printing workshops. Cheung has also donated his work for use in fundraising for Lyon-Martin Health Services and Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco, which provides medical care for low-income, uninsured or under-insured female and transgender patients.
Cheung also offered prints of his work to those who donated to bailout funds and organizations working to support the Black Lives Matter movement—an initiative that raised over $10,000. Cheung and Ramirez live and work in Oakland, CA, while Cheung continues to exhibit regularly between Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Amsterdam. Speaking of his creative motives, Cheung explains: “We must all do the work that we can in our own communities to dismantle white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and any forms of bigotry.” If his spectacular career so far can be seen as a measure, there can be no doubt that art is the perfect means to spark such meaningful transformations within modern society.
The Jeffrey Cheung Hand Embellished Pancake skateboard will be made available by Baer & Bosch Auctioneers at their anniversary Cultured Space auction on August 14, 2021. You can register to bid live or leave an absentee bid at Baer & Bosch on Liveauctioneers.