Biennale... Triennial... and a New Word for “Artist” (excerpts)
Frank Vigneron

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The work of Tsang Yin-hung also treats the theme of cultural identity through a medium that was fairly rare in Hong Kong and is starting to appear more and more frequently in the work of this new generation of p1asticians: the family photo (and I must confess that I was particularly touched by this concept because my brother had recently scanned and put on a CD the photos my parents took during their stay in Madagascar, Vietnam and Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s). Due to the chaotic circumstances of China's history in the second half of the twentieth century, many new immigrants arrived with only the clothes on their back while the majority of the local inhabitants simply did not have the means to make and keep family photos. The it is very common in Europe to have large amounts of very old photos (so old in some cases that no one remembers Who that particular person was), it is not something that the majority of Hong Kong families either had or cared to keep in the recent past. It is however not true of the generation who was born after the 1960s and most families do have photos from the late 1960s and 1970s.

The installation of Tsang Yin-hung comes with four photos, a text and an object. In typical conceptual art fashion (something reminiscent of the work of feminist plastician Mary Kelly for instance), the documents are put in discreet-looking frames to enhance their documentary quality. The text is as follow:

One day I decided to start making art. My son Kwan Sheung-chi, who is also an artist, suggested staying with me for a day and documenting my life on that day. I told him that my life has nothing, but he insisted no harm for trial. Morning exercise, breakfast, read newspaper, watch stock market quotes on TV and in bank, market, prepare lunch, lunch, afternoon nap, watch stock market quotes on TV, market, prepare dinner, dinner with my family, wash dishes, watch 3 TV dramas, bath, go to bed... On 29th June 2005, we proceeded with our plan. During the conversation we had after lunch, I mentioned last week I helped a friend to draw a design plan for a kitchen cabinet. From 1950 to 1954, I practiced mechanical drawing in the Guang-dong ji xie xue yuan (Guangdong Institute of Mechanic) when I was in Mainland China. Many of my old classmates and friends became engineer in Mainland later. Chi said he already forget about my study and asked me a lot. Later, Chi took out some old photo album, the photos were taken when my husband and I were just married. He found a photo which was probably taken in 1974, showing me have my big son in arms, in our flat. He said he has never seen the teapoy in the photo. A housemate of my brother, Cheung Chai, made most of the furniture in wood for our flat, including that teapoy. I said no, you should have seen it. Chi found another photo that was taken probably in 1982, showing he as a little child with another teapoy, which is now in our flat. Yes, he was right. He asked if I could still remember the appearance of the former teapoy and make a technical drawing. He said he could rebuild the old teapoy from my drawing.

The juxtaposition of the 1970s photo and the more recent one (both in black and white to emphasize their similarity) is also reminiscent of a series of photos taken by the Chinese plastician Hai Bo (born 1962) living in Beijing, who found group photos of young people in the 1950s and 1960s and spent an incredible amount of time trying to use the same people today, posing in the same attitude and at the same spot to establish a sort of "before-after" rendering of time passing by and changing situations that look similar only on the surface. But Tsang Yin-hung's focus is different, after passing through the nostalgic rendering of the photos, the real time spent in the elaboration of this artwork is the reconstruction of an object from the past, this teapoy Whose material and structure feels particularly out of place in the sleek space of the art gallery. This method of reconstruction can also be analyzed through Ackbar Abbas concept of deja-disparu. In a chapter of his book on Hong Kong, Abbas tells the story of the Repulse bay hotel that has been rebuilt as an imitation of the original colonial hote1 demolished several years ago, one could also mention this shopping mall in Stanley, made inside the reconstructed structure of a colonial building originally located in Central or even the new Star ferry terminal, Which will also be an imitation from the past. This teapoy could also be a perfect visual stand-in for Abbas concept of deja-disparu. But the arrangement of the documents on the wall and the fake old piece of furniture on the ground makes this installation particularly efficient in conveying feelings and thoughts that neither Mary Kelly nor Hai Bo could convey in their own artworks.

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(Frank Vigernon, “Biennale... Triennial... and a New Word for “Artist””, Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook 2005, Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dec 2006, pp.121-144.)