Solo Exhibition by Leung Mee Ping
Pearl River Delta Series I: Made In Hong Kong
(held concurrently with Solo Exhibitions by Chen Sai Hua Kun and Ma Shuqing)
Curated by Valerie C. Doran
Opening Reception
4 - 6 pm, Saturday, 1 March 2014
Curator's Statement
Leung’s mixed-media installation Pearl River Delta Series: Made In Hong Kong is like a conceptual onion: peel away one layer of meaning and association only to find multiple layers underneath. On the first analysis, it is a sophisticated conceptual work bringing into question issues of appropriation, copying and authorship. It takes both as its model and its locus of production that artistic bastion of hand-made replication and appropriation, the ‘artist’s village’ of Dafen in Shenzhen, which originally grew out of Hong Kong’s souvenir painting trade; and which is now a tourist destination in its own right.
On another level, Leung’s work investigates the souvenir itself as a repository of associative memory. Made in Hong Kong is ultimately a vehicle of disorientation, shoving us back and forth across the border, scrambling points of view, and engendering multiple reversals of both the (Mainland) tourist’s and the (Hong Kong) producer’s gaze. This is the first project in Leung’s ongoing Pearl River Delta Series of conceptual (and to some degree, performative) works in which the artist investigates the various, shifting relationships and mutual infiltration between the cities of the Pearl River Delta: Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen.
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