away

About

Hong Kong-based curatorial office and gallery Mur Nomade presents away, an exhibition on the subject of loss and remembrance curated by Yip Kai Chun, opening on July 11th, and on view through September 19th. This exhibition is the winning project of Mur Nomade’s first Open Call for Young Curators.

Drawing on his personal experience and following his distinctive curatorial line and interest in mixing disciplines and generations, the young Hong Kong curator presents a group show featuring one of his sound works, a video by Jolene Mok, an installation by sculptor Foon Sham, and traditional paper crafts by Amanda Cheng of Soul House (Paper Art) Design Studio.

The exhibited works deal with death, healing and the research of meaning in life. All are means of expression of complex and unspeakable feelings, either in their creation process, or in their presentation and engagement with the audience.

In the exhibition, creative disciplines that are usually separated are harmoniously blended together. The blurring of the boundaries of ‘art’, the combination of works by emerging and established artists, and the intentional confusion between curating and art making, reveal Yip Kai Chun’s singular artistic and curatorial approach and desire to shake conventions: rules are not rejected but cleverly applied in unexpected ways.

Although the exhibition brings together emotionally charged artworks, feelings of distress or fear are suggested in a subtle and composed manner. With away, Yip Kai Chun explores an uneasy and unsolvable issue with a though-provoking exhibition inviting visitors to quietude and distance.

Curatorial statement:

Half a year after my mother died of cancer, I put up an installation titled Incomplete Finale with the audio recordings of her, and invited my family and close friends to see the work. Many of them might have known about my mother’s situation, but had never asked about it. I had not talked about it either.

To me and perhaps many others, the feelings and emotions triggered by death are largely unspeakable.

It is very much the actual death I have experienced – its unspeakable nature and desolated process – that drives me to further explore the notion with an exhibition. Death is a permanent loss and termination that defines the very existence of human. Compared to other losses, death is maybe the most traumatising as it reminds us the limit of life.

Each work [in the exhibition] is a vessel of emotion and memory, representing an invaluable and irreplaceable relationship with the deceased, venting contemplation of the deceased, death and life. Through the works, the creators presented in the exhibition designed their unique and poetic ways to remember the deceased.

Although the works were created with the strong emotions triggered by death, they all show the potentially favourable facets of death – the relief and rebirth of both the deceased and the alive in different senses. Moving on to the future may only be possible with the remembrance of the past. Likewise, facing death may be essential for living a more purposeful life.

Experts from ‘… you live on in here’

Yip Kai Chun, June 2015