Tsaiyun (Rosy-Cloud) Bridge / Forget Each Other in the Rivers and Lakes at Hordaland Kunstsenter

Artists: Cici Wu (with Chan Hau Chun & Chui Chi Yin, Taro Masushio, Xiaofei Mo, Park Xun, Fai Wan, Emilia Wang)

Exhibition title: Tsaiyun (Rosy-Cloud) Bridge / Forget Each Other in the Rivers and Lakes

Curated by: Mathijs van Geest

Venue: Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway

Date: February 25 – May 7, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Hordaland Kunstsenter

Can we multiply realities so that it equates to a fiction? An orientation of difference. A repetition’s anathema.
Two indifferences in brackets. Liquid vision.
– Taro Masushio

Repairment has to be dispersed, but together.
– Jaime Chu (Hong Kong-Mainland Relationship Repairment Study Group)

In the center of the gallery space, a floating bridge made of paper and bamboo wires is illuminated from within by a projector, screening Cici Wu’s new black-and-white stop motion film. The exhibition’s titular work refers to Tsaiyun Bridge, which Wu first encountered in the art historian James Cahill’s personal clippings. Originating from an English edition of China Pictorial (1962), a state-sponsored periodical with roots in the very beginnings of propaganda efforts from Communist China. Struck by the translators choice to render

Tsaiyun (彩雲) which translated literally would mean “colorful cloud”–– as “Rosy-Cloud”, perhaps this interpretative choice speaks simply of a translator with a romantic approach to language, but perhaps it also speaks of one who feared to not indicate the color red for political reasons. Sensing the traces of a peculiar affective and ideological world expanding behind this minute linguistic gesture, the artist began to meditate on the contours of a historical time marked by the violence of idealism and erasure of reality.

For the artist, the contents in the clippings of 1962 reflect a period of relative relaxation for art in China after the Anti-Rightist Campaign, despite the famine and deaths which followed the Great Leap Forward. As Wu was cataloging Cahill’s clippings in New York in 2020, she recognised an indescribable scar stretching across the past and the present, where feelings of displacement, absence, curiosity, and the longing for an alternative world all intersect.

A similar desire of longing frames the second part of the exhibition. Forget Each Other in the Rivers and Lakes suggests a new way of being together: mourning or celebrating, an end or a beginning of relationships. Inviting artist peers who either hide their identity in order to continue unfinished missions in a specific geographical locale, or whom mysteriously retreat to the spiritual realm whilst waiting for a new world to be born. Both poetic and speculative, their works are often the opposite of a thesis. Rejecting artificial clarity, their practices deliberately stretch themselves out towards a space of charged in-betweenness. A space of connection is then created for a reimagining to happen, in this recurring transition between the old and the new world, what do their hearts say?

Chan Hau Chun + Chui Chi Yin (Hong Kong) presents a four-channel video installation that portrays everyday objects of their friends and the stories behind them. The installation re-examines the relationship between an object and a feeling of unrelievable tension and reveals a thing or two about their romantic love, family love, friendships, death and politics.

Taro Masushio’s (US/Japan) conceptual photographs show daily objects observed from different perspectives. Two images shown alongside each other propose the idea of a substitute reality, or simply the perversity of sameness, or a feeling of anesthesia.

Xiaofei Mo’s (US/China) new film traverses across the past lives and future lives, with a sentient mirror and a missing tooth playing important roles. The film is the second chapter of Lovers Revolt Lovers Revolve: stories against dictators, colonizers, and all other monsters, a collaborative fiction project with Cici Wu, consisting of video, works on paper, and an on-going series of publications.

Park Xun (South Korea) presents a large painting titled Lotus Pond and a small drawing on paper, both inspired by nature. Sensations of plants and creatures nestle in her memory. Xun refines and reimagines through painting, the flexible movements and ever-changing forms of wild creatures while living close to them.

Fai Wan (Hong Kong) initiated a collective film with five high school students who he has been filming for half a year. In particular, this short film reflected a short period of time that they shared a 8mm camera together. The project encourages a refreshed image of Hong Kong from the eyes of the younger generation in post-2019.

Emilia Wang’s (US/Japan) work consists of soft sculptures with sound, in the shapes of a heart-symbol, a rabbit, a human heart, a deflated breast and a stone, exploring different realms and their borders and definitions. She approaches artmaking with a wild spirit, through a sense of firm innocence and honesty, and oftentimes visual art is integral to her music practice.

ARTISTS

Cici Wu was born in Beijing and grew up in Hong Kong. She is a New York-based mixed media artist. She works with elements of deconstruction in cinematic tradition to address and reveal the invisible links between social and individual microhistories and memories. Writing and videography are also integral to her artistic practice. She has had solo exhibitions at 47 Canal, New York (2021, 2018); Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); and has participated in several group exhibitions internationally, as well as the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021) and the Yokohama Triennial 2020 Episōdo 02 (2020).

Emilia Wang is an artist, musician, and writer based in Tokyo, Japan. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include Love, A Maior, Viseu, Portugal (2022) and wandering against dominant time (online project), 47 Canal, New York (2021). She has performed internationally at institutions and venues, such as Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR, SculptureCenter, New York, NY, and Spread, Shimokitazawa, Tokyo.

Taro Masushio is an artist born in Japan, based in New York City. He received his BA from UC Berkeley and MFA from New York University, and has taught at both institutions. His works have been exhibited internationally including at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 47 Canal, New York, Capsule Shanghai, Immanence, Pacific Film Archive, and other venues.

Xiaofei Mo is a filmmaker based in New York. She works with an AI named POND to explore the porous nature of image and language, memory and feeling, friction and movement. POND have no mother tongue, they learn from and in translation, and grow organs without body. Her works were shown at International Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (2021), Empty Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong (2020), and c4 projects in Copenhagen (2019). She is a founding member of The Room of Spirit and Time, a collective reading group resided at Queens Museum in New York (2018-2020), and has received grants from Goethe-Institut China (2018) and Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Calcutta (2008).

Fai Wan is an independent documentary filmmaker lives and works in Hong Kong. Driven by a passion for independent filmmaking, Wan ventured into topics that covered social movements and the plight of the grassroots in society. He received the Hong Kong Documentary Award from Hong Kong International Documentary Festival in 2019.

Chan Hau Chun & Chui Chi Yin have a collaborative film practice. Both are independent documentary filmmakers who live and work in Hong Kong. Chan’s notable work 32+4 has been nominated for Golden Horse Best Documentary Section (2015) and has been awarded at the 61st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2015). Her recent work has been showcased at Hong Kong Jumpingframes Film Festival (2022). Chui’s film debut has been selected for the Chinese Documentary Film Festival (2014). Co-directed films include No Song to Sing (2017) and Call me Mrs. Chan (2017). Their video installations have also been shown in Hong Kong.

Park Xun is an artist who lives and works in Wanju, South Korea. Her works incorporate drawing, video, painting, installation and collaborative art. She has been a resident artist at the Public Art Project Shin-heung (2020-2021). She has curated four shows under the theme of the Jeju 4·3 Incident (massacre) including When the Camellia Blooms at Show & Tell (2019), The Face of the Island at Cultural complex Sonemari (2019), 100 minus 30 at Art Space C (2018), and The Face of the Island “preview” at Lee Jung-seop Museum of Art (2018). Her works were exhibited at the Jeju 4·3 Peace Memorial Hall (2019); the 4·3 Art Festival (2019); and the Jeju Biennale (2018). Park has recently moved to a rural area away from the city, where she records and expresses through paintings of nature that simultaneously changes.