At midnight on June 30th 1997, the flag of the United Kingdom and the flag of the People’s Republic of China rose side-by-side at the Hong Kong handover ceremony.[1] In the eyes of the government, Hong Kong is back on its “right” track. Our identity as “Heung1 gong2 yan4” is ambiguously constructed;[2] we are part of the Chinese diaspora, but at the same time, heavily influenced by our colonial history. What seemed like decolonisation instead became a form of re-colonisation. With the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020,[3]many chose to flee, including me. Our land feels progressively unfamiliar, and we constantly grapple with our conflicting backgrounds.
Fragrance Harbour is an installation created as vessels to hold the memories of Hong Kongers, its spindly legs arch and loop over its central structure, a speaker within emits sounds of everyday life and protest. Modroc is draped over chicken wire, revealing its hollow structure and suggesting wounds. Imagining an apocalyptic future, the city lives on, and our future slowly dissipates. The creatures rise from protest rubble, born of political crisis. Fragrance Harbour is a site of mourning for the loss of home, freedom, and the values that defined Hong Kong.
My ongoing project 非人非魚 Interstice of the People[4] originates from the only existing mythology in Hong Kong; the story of Lo Ting (盧亭), a half-man, half-fish figure. After the handover, artist Ho HingKay reanimates the myth, reemerging Lo Ting through exhibitions, restating the myth permanently in conversation with the chimeric identity of Hong Kongers.[5] Consequently, Lo Ting has an already established visual language: a fish head and torso, with human limbs. He is almost always male. I am interested in unravelling this form, reimagining Lo Ting as a site of transformation rather than representation. The series is not to claim its origin, but to navigate a constant becoming, shaped by exile, memory, and resistance.
The first iteration of this work is an installation performance piece, consisting of a headpiece made from aluminium wire and metallic glazed clay pieces, in the form of a spine. I perform a set of ritualised movements, navigating the space and paying respects to the myth. Underneath the headpiece are bricks that pave a small area of the room. The performance is concluded by the action of paving and unpaving. This is inspired by the brick arches locally known as “mini-Stonehenges”,[6] which protesters used as roadblocks to slow down police vehicles. I then put on the spine, transforming into an imagined Lo Ting. This marginalised, hybrid creature – neither fully human nor fish – becomes a metaphor of self-cultural identity.
Rebecca Horn’s earlier works of body extensions have greatly informed the performance. In an interview in 1994, Horn commented on the girl who performed in her Unicorn piece that “by being turned into a prisoner, she freed herself inside”.[7] I particularly resonated with this during my performance; as I donned the headpiece, I felt its weight gradually increasing, anchoring me and my movements as I unpaved the space. The headpiece resembles an exoskeleton, embodying not only fragments of myths, collective identity, and history, it restricts and extends the reach of the corporal body. It functions both as a protective armour and a form of externalised vulnerability.
In the current embodiment of this work, the initial stoneware is replaced by porcelain, introducing a sense of fragility and impermanence. The shift in material amplifies the sound of the clay pieces clinking against each other. My gestures no longer follow choreography but emerge from my reaction to the vibration of the form itself. I have also cast my own bricks, each glazed to shimmer like relics, put together like a shrine.
This interest in inhabitable space extends into my exploration of Homi Bhabha’s Third Space Theory, where postcolonial subjects exist in a hybrid new and non-space. I first came across the theory through Wangechi Mutu’s use of hybrid figures in her collages, these creatures are often fantastical forms that fuse mythology and folklore narratives. In the production of physical and performance spaces of the hybrid and in-between, I speak from this “third space of enunciation”, a new and radical position for the diasporic Hong Konger. This space is produced through my own embodied inhabiting and speaking, with only the ruins or signs remaining as I step outside. Culture and identity intersect, where the “cutting edge of translation and negotiations” occurs.[8] This space is not tethered to a fixed geography but emerges during the performance. For me, it is these ephemeral gestures, the unstable clinking of porcelain, the rebirth of Lo Ting, where mythology and reality meet.
[1] The handover occurred under the agreement that the city would be governed under the “one country, two systems” principle, where the city would enjoy “a high degree of autonomy” for the next 50 years.
[2] Heung1 Gong2 Yan4: Cantonese Jyutping pronunciation of 香港人, directly translated to Hong Kong People.
[3] The National Security Law (NSL) has given the authorities free rein to illegitimately criminalise dissent while stripping away the rights of those it targets. It has created a human rights emergency for the people of Hong Kong.
[4] 非人非魚: neither human nor fish
[5] Mapping Identities: The Art and Curating of Oscar Ho, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, November 5, 2004 – December 5, Exhibition.
[6] mini-Stonehenge: When struck by a wheel, the top block falls away, leaving two remaining blocks which together form a buttress that prevents the wheel from moving forward. This ordinary structure soon became a sign of resilience.
[7] Rebecca Horn, “Round The Horn”, interview by Stuart Morgan, Frieze, September 6, 1994, https://www.frieze.com/article/round-horn.
[8] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (Routledge, 1994), 278.