Inquiry: In Search of Home
27 July - 9 September 2023
Flowers Gallery Hong Kong
Participanted artists: Joyce Ho, Wu Sibo and Luka Yuanyuan Yang
Joyce Ho, Balancing Act, 2018
Painted stainless steel
204 x 154 x 84 cm
Wu Sibo, Balloon Vendor, 2022
Oil on canvas
100 x 80 cmJoyce Ho, Vera x Diary, 2022
Single channel video 8'22''
Dimensions variableWu Sibo, In Search of Clues, 2023
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 cm
The summer group exhibition Inquiry: In Search of Home, presenting artworks by artists Joyce Ho, Wu Sibo and Luka Yuanyuan Yang. This exhibition explores the concept of "home" through imagination and inquiry. The observation into the home has been a classic creative impulse for artists throughout history and across cultures, with many variations in its meaning. Sometimes it represents the aspirations of the diaspora to establish an identity in a new land, while at other times, it reflects the artist's own family. The pandemic has given home and domestic space new dimensions, as the dilemma of physical distancing has amplified its significance. Those on the move find new temporary or permanent homes, while those who remain in the same place face the challenge of blurring boundaries between daily life and work. Home has become a place of quarantine, and quarantine has become home. This exhibition presents works by artists from diverse backgrounds, each exploring the meaning of home through the perspectives of landscape, space, and diaspora. These works highlight the complexities around the concept of home, as well as theas well as the contemporary power structures that shape our perception of it.
Wu Sibo has been depicting the "Open Mine Park" and its surrounding scenery in his hometown since 2005. In Wu's mysterious landscapes, the open-pit mining area in western Guangdong and its mining history, local corruption, and environmental pollution problems are comprehensible in the images. However, his works are dedicated to breaking the shackles of subject-oriented realism and making them narrative landscapes that wander between text and image. The four works in the exhibition were created in the mid and late periods of the pandemic in mainland China, and the landscape is involved in constructing private and public history. In Joyce Ho's piece, Balancing Act, the installation resembles a modified object detached from its original location. Despite its stiff material, the artwork creates a sense of movement within the space, adding visual and spatial tension. Its semantic misalignment in the artwork reinforces the uneasiness of the space. Vera X Diary Index, features the actor integrating herself into different spaces in homes, blurring the lines between humans and furniture-the visuals of both pieces serve to balance and correct the perception of the space.
Luka Yuanyuan Yang's film Tales of Chinatown begins with a walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown: following Orson Welles' 1940s film The Lady from Shanghai into the last surviving theater in San Francisco's Chinatown, and then strolling from the "Shanghai Low" to the "Forbidden City Nightclub," the camera follows Chinese dancer Cynthia Yee, historian Wylie Wong, and David Lei on a journey through time and space. Since 2018, Yang has investigated Chinese women in the 20th-century performing arts industry overseas. By reenacting characters from these plays, Yang brings to life the memories and trauma of Chinese immigrants who experienced the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943) and subsequent generations in the 20th century.