2023 ACC CONTEXT Walking, Wandering

Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong

〈Young Girl Bending Her Arms〉, 2014.

Chromogenic print, 150×100cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈Man With A Hat In A Long Gown〉, 2014.

Chromogenic print, 150×100cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈Office Lady With A Red Umbrella〉, 2010.

Chromogenic print, 150×100cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈Kid Running With A Chair〉, 2014.

Chromogenic print, 150×112cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈Man in Suit Rubbing the Back of His Neck〉, 2018.

Chromogenic print, 150×100cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈Japanese Housewife Scratching Her Back〉, 2010.

Chromogenic print, 150×100cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

〈The Woman Carrying Rubber Basin On Her Head 〉, 2023.

Single-channel video, color, sound, 0min 00sec.
Commissioned by Asia Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

Original photograph by Kim Ki-Chan. Courtesy of Kim Ki-Chan’s Photographs Collection, ACC Archive.

The work of Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong tells stories about those who walk in the city. The series He was lost yesterday and we found him today focuses on figures discovered in photographic images in mass media such as magazines, newspapers, postcards, and books. Even if the figures are unidentified and just happened to be captured in the photographs without a specific message, it still does not change the fact that the figures did exist once in our past. Leung and Wong dress up as the figures discovered in the images, then take photographs of themselves in the identical pose as the figures. The portraits of the figures, blown up to real-life size, invite the viewer to imagine the narratives of their life. By doing so, the artists form a romantic rendezvous with figures of the past in a simple but vivid way, outside of the macronarrative and media that seem completely indifferent to these unidentified passersby.

In this exhibition, Leung + Wong present their new work that appropriates a photograph by Kim Ki-Chan (1938-2005), a work from the ACC Archive. In this photograph, taken in an alley near Seoul Station in 1970, four women walk with a basin on their heads. This way of carrying basins came to be used to facilitate people to carry stuff in crowded streets, and demonstrates the movement of body that adapts and changes with the city structure. The artists’ structural analysis of the city is not only physical, but also progresses to imagining the social and cultural system that begins with an individual’s life as a woman of a certain period of time. The figures’ gestures in the photograph are re-played by another woman, born many years later, showing the encounter and interaction between the two pedestrians which transcends the generation gap.