"Reconfigure(d)"
Artist Residency (May 2019) and exhibition at Making Space, Guangzhou, China (May 24 -July 24, 2019).
Working across textile and moving image, I explore distinctive cultural spaces and the life of particular communities that allow for something shared, both within and beyond existing national and geographic boundaries.
At Making Space artist-run residency, I created two fabric works and a dual-channel video. One screen is playing the sunset coastal scene of my hometown in Aceh, Indonesia and the other screen is playing the sunset scene of Pearl river in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, where Making Space is located. As the two screens meet, the two horizons (of Indonesia and China) converge as one continuous line, connecting the two places together. Located along the South China sea, Guangzhou was an important hub for maritime transportation and trades connecting China and the West from the early Tang Dynasty until the 17th and 18th centuries where textiles, tea, and ceramics were brought into Europe as luxurious items. Guangdong is also the province where my ancestors and the first recorded Chinese New Zealanders immigrated from (mid-1800s).
For the drawing on the fabrics, I used a mixture of bees’ wax sourced from Indonesia and China. Using a Tjanting, the traditional Indonesian instrument for applying hot wax, each repetition of the pattern contains small differences or displacements which points to a temporality of the ‘in-between’. This in-between condition allows “newness to come into the world.” These works as a whole signify my cross-cultural mobility and identity at the same time address issues around cultural dynamism, migration, and displacement.
*An article (in Mandarin) written by Xiang, an artist in residence at Making Space about my work, family history, and our walk around my ancestor's hometown in Huiyang, Houzhou:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/embujjH9GnOVu5_-hX3w6A
Artist Residency (May 2019) and exhibition at Making Space, Guangzhou, China (May 24 -July 24, 2019).
Working across textile and moving image, I explore distinctive cultural spaces and the life of particular communities that allow for something shared, both within and beyond existing national and geographic boundaries.
At Making Space artist-run residency, I created two fabric works and a dual-channel video. One screen is playing the sunset coastal scene of my hometown in Aceh, Indonesia and the other screen is playing the sunset scene of Pearl river in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, where Making Space is located. As the two screens meet, the two horizons (of Indonesia and China) converge as one continuous line, connecting the two places together. Located along the South China sea, Guangzhou was an important hub for maritime transportation and trades connecting China and the West from the early Tang Dynasty until the 17th and 18th centuries where textiles, tea, and ceramics were brought into Europe as luxurious items. Guangdong is also the province where my ancestors and the first recorded Chinese New Zealanders immigrated from (mid-1800s).
For the drawing on the fabrics, I used a mixture of bees’ wax sourced from Indonesia and China. Using a Tjanting, the traditional Indonesian instrument for applying hot wax, each repetition of the pattern contains small differences or displacements which points to a temporality of the ‘in-between’. This in-between condition allows “newness to come into the world.” These works as a whole signify my cross-cultural mobility and identity at the same time address issues around cultural dynamism, migration, and displacement.
*An article (in Mandarin) written by Xiang, an artist in residence at Making Space about my work, family history, and our walk around my ancestor's hometown in Huiyang, Houzhou:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/embujjH9GnOVu5_-hX3w6A
