find me a house  
2019
part of ‘Early Years Project #4: Praxis Makes Perfect, An Incubating Project for Young Artists’
Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC)
10 May - 28 July 2019  


2 wooden panels, a wooden frame, a metal frame, 4 granite floors, neon lights, found objects, paper maché, and inkjet di-cut sticker

panels and frames ranges from 230x100cm to 244x300cm, granite floors are dimensions variable, inkjet di-cut sticker: 120x143cm

           

A spatial intervention of movable walls arranged to create a housing archetype's mise-en-scene, modeled after the mainland Chinese immigrant's homes during the 1940s-1960s (as portrayed in the film sets of Edward Yang's and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films). The housing image, in turn, is in correlation to the real diasporic living space of my Teochew grandmother. The work attempts to put together stories of my grandmother's root as a Teochew immigrant, alongside the documentary image representation of the Chinese diasporic movement, both happening during/post-China's Cultural Revolution, which presents through the historical period films of Yang's and Hou’s.

The house is physically composed and mentally traceable by arranging the moveable walls. They are fragmentary assemblages and becomes the visible extension of the floorplan. Their movability diminishes the ability to define the space. Its function enables the various ways the work could be presented. Like a film set, the audience is the viewers looking into a movie or a memory. The house is fictionalized as is channeled through structures of representation. The result attempts to create a quasi-utopian space, reimagining the relationships between memory and history, an elusive recreation of atmospheres, a reconstructed situation in time.