(The pandemic gave him the possibility to experiment with truly making artwork inside a man-made, doubly closed system – quarantine lodges and an remoted Hong Kong.)
However now, with “Tender Breath”, he has turned his gaze outward, learning historic rituals that totally different communities have established to beat loneliness, worry and self-doubts, and the result’s spellbinding.
Hong Kong artist creates his work with vegetation, not paints
Hong Kong artist creates his work with vegetation, not paints
There are shrivelled clumps of orange and yellow tissue scattered on the ground, paying homage to a wide range of actions, from post-hookup clean-ups to the oranges that believers toss as much as the wishing tree. A woody, musky scent is within the air. There’s a diffuser on one aspect of the room, additionally surrounded by clumps of tissue. We’re informed that what we odor may additionally come from behind two closed cabinet doorways: a pile of sweat-soaked, pheromone-rich T-shirts.
I had gone there to flee the throngs that descended on Para Web site’s predominant flooring for an Artwork Basel occasion on March 28. For a short time, there was simply me and one other particular person sitting on the opposite aspect of the log. Within the hushed ambiance, I may have been in that clearing in Hampstead Heath, testing a stranger.
The log just isn’t actual. Yeung made a duplicate, utilizing scented cleaning soap, of a piece of the well-known “F*** Tree” in Hampstead Heath – an historic oak that may have developed its curved contour owing to the variety of our bodies which have been pressed towards it because the nineteenth century.
He made his first “F*** Tree” in London in 2023 for “Tender Floor”, an earlier iteration of the exhibition at Gasworks, which co-commissioned the tree with Para Web site and Aranya Artwork Centre in mainland China.
It’s on this Hong Kong present that the discarded orange tissues have appeared to make the hyperlink with the wishing tree. What can these two timber probably have in frequent?
Why Hong Kong stays Asia’s main arts hub regardless of powerful Covid curbs
Why Hong Kong stays Asia’s main arts hub regardless of powerful Covid curbs
With each timber, we beloved them, we turned them into vessels of our personal needs, after which we abused them – which nearly sums up humanity’s relationship with nature.
However Yeung’s apply is rarely nearly being respectful of nature. His technique of queering normative distinctions will be seen in how he highlights the blurred line between pure and synthetic: in any case, the numerous who nonetheless queue in Lam Tsuen at Lunar New Yr consider that the tree god has efficiently hooked up itself to a brand new plastic dwelling.
By melding the timber collectively, he raises the query of ethical hierarchy. A Google search suggests each traditions began within the 1800s. One represents a self-abandonment to divine windfall, the opposite, the self-abandonment to the pleasuring of and being pleasured by a stranger.
Yeung’s selection of cleaning soap as the fabric for the “F*** Tree” duplicate means that cruising will be cleaning. (Coincidentally, Louise Giovanelli’s exhibition that’s now on at White Dice Hong Kong additionally explores that liminal area between sexual and non secular ecstasy.)
Will an important exhibition of his profession – representing Hong Kong in the course of the world’s most vital up to date artwork occasion in Venice – measure as much as the convincing immersive expertise of “Tender Breath”? Keep tuned.
“Trevor Yeung: Tender Breath”, Para Web site annex, 10B, Wing Wah Industrial Constructing, 677 King’s Street, Quarry Bay, Wed-Solar, 12-7pm. Till Might 26.
