Artist Leung Chi-Wo
Biography/Born in Hong Kong in 1968, Leung graduated with a MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1997 after a photography study in l'Istituto per lo Sviluppo Socio-Economico dello Spilimberghese in Italy and an internship in the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent, Belgium. He has exhibited in Hong Kong, New York, Melbourne, Tokyo, Oslo, Vienna, Hamburg and Toronto, etc. Awards received include the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (1997), Urban Council Award of the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial (1996) and the First Prize in Sculpture from the Philippe Charriol Foundation (1995). In 2000, he held a solo exhibition in the Queens Museum of Art, New York. In 2001, his site-specific project was exhibited in the Hong Kong Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Pesented by the Asia Art Archive, this time he presents a site-specific audio-visual installation for the city wide project, October Contemporary 2009.
(Inter)Viewing Possession is the "most difficult project to explain" as he said in his personal web page .
This is an art project that considers the invisible links between the Archive and its community through the practice of collecting.
Designers, shop owners, teenagers, homeowners, and residents from the surrounding Sheung Wan neigbhourhood have taken part in the project by sharing the stories behind their personal possessions through interviews. Inside eight view-finders installed at archive, the audience is confronted with re-written, fragmented texts based on personal stories and observations culled from the interviews, delivered via intertwined monologues by Leung Chi-Wo and his partner, Sara Wong.
The work consciously attempts to transgress the boundaries between viewing and voyeurism, real and fictional, art and the everyday.
