The Crescent Void

 

It begins with a worn-out photo.

 

Hiding in an album my grandmother left us after she passed away is a photo that tells an untold chapter of my family history: My grandparents used to run a small grocery store in Chai Wan in the 70s. Today, Man Lee Store, as it was called, has already morphed into a run-of-the-mill concrete wall structure facing an underground train station.

 

Our city never ceases to change. As I turn the found objects from grocery stores into specimens in concrete, the disappearing urban tales buried underneath the ever-taller high-rises are given new forms. The absence in space of the concrete boards makes a poignant remark, moulds after moulds, as a that-has-been—an uncanny presence against change. These half-moulds-half-specimens are then recast as negative images. The photographic impressions, with their light and shadow reversed, reflect the achingly quotidian life lost in the fabric of space and time. Their silence never ceases to speak to us, as a void lurking in our city that seems so close yet distant to us.

 

The stores and their stories may be remembered and disremembered. Never are they too far from our hearts, however. They are just around the corner of the street that we pass by every day. A once most familiar sight. 

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缺景

 

創作從一張褪色的老照片開始。

 

於祖母遺物的舊相簿中，我偶然發現祖父母於70年代在柴灣曾經營一家士多——「文利商店」。當我重尋這士多的原址時，發現它早已變成一堵水泥高牆，立在鐵路站的對面。

 

我以「半倒模」的方式來為士多製作「標本」，像化石一樣把消失中的城市風景烙印於水泥上。我以倒模來製造影像，以光影對倒這些在機遇和繁華下所漸漸消逝的日常瑣事，一道被淡忘的人文風景。物件於水泥中的負空間以負影像來呈現，被掏空了的物象又彷彿於影像的反面猶存—一種若重若輕的「此曾在」。

 

士多大概沒有名字，因它不曾被人們記起；只被牢牢記着它真實地存在於某街口轉角，是我們曾經最熟識的。