In the short time since the inaugural exhibition of “Homeland in Transit” in 2019, our world has changed dramatically and each word in this title has developed a wider scope of meaning and expanded relevance. In the extraordinary situations of 2020, we set sail along the forces of water – an intrinsic and characteristic element of Hong Kong – through the notions of migration, self-searching and our human resilience to further our expedition.

In 2021, we arrive at Ein Fenster inmitten der Welt, a window in the middle of the world situated in a natural reserve forest area near Stuttgart, with two interfaces: one to the real world, one to the virtual. The physical location of the exhibition is at a house in Wolkenhof built by Heinrich von Zügel (1850-1941), a founding member of the Munich Secession and pioneer of German Impressionism in 19th century. During that time, Wolkenhof was a meeting place for artists and the name literally means ‘Clouds Court’ in German.

The environment of Wolkenhof and its name serve as points of departure for this transit through the dynamics of the hydrological cycle: clouds, wind and rain. The boundless nature of clouds has inspired many in the arts across different cultures. Cloud appears in many poets’ work including ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ (1798) by English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) who personifies himself as a melancholic cloud that aimlessly drifts ‘high o’er vales and hills’. His poem illustrates that we do not realise the significance of the simplest things until they are gone forever. By using daffodils as a metaphor for the voice of Nature, the poet reminds humankind of its restorative power and value. Are the clouds floating in hopes that they will discover fulfillment in life? In a very different context and in his tempestuous style, Chinese poet Xu Zhimo (1897-1831) opens his poem ‘By Chance’ (1926) with ‘I am a cloud in the sky…’, expressing the inevitable nature and qualities of change, unpredictability and impermanence between the cloud and water, I and you, ‘the sea in the darkness’ and ‘the glow that sparked between us as we crossed our paths’. The clouds lightly float in the sky, yet their movements, direction or destination cannot be decided according to its own will, without other forces, such as the wind.

The concept stems from a recent community project of the artist in a district called Happy Valley in Hong Kong with a local art space C&G Apartment in April and May 2021. Happy Valley is the home of the horse-racing course and is often associated with the phrase ‘horse will race, dance will continue’ referring to the fifty years of autonomy the city was promised after the handover of 1997.

Observing another phenomenal migration wave in Hong Kong, Ching prepares the mini leaves as souvenirs for the people who are leaving. The leaves in our palms act as pixels of camouflage landscapes, urging us to reflect on the notion of change: climate/temperature, nature/environment, synchronising indoor/private lives. This contemplation is believed to have a therapeutic effect.

Ching has extended the project to different districts in Hong Kong and was invited by the curator to expand the project and its spirit with the Hong Kong communities in Switzerland, where the curator lives, and to Germany, where this exhibition take place in both Murrhardt and Berlin.

In this installation, the leaves are collected by Hongkongers in Switzerland and Germany from their everyday living environments and punched to create a new diasporic landscape and memory to reflect on the notion of transition. Camouflage is a combination of a plural colour spectrum and corresponds to different terrains. In the artist’s eyes, with many leaving Hong Kong, the concept of ‘we’ will have to transcend physical space and territory from now on and rebuild many small reasons to come ‘together’.

The Chinese saying ‘A big tree makes good shade and the shade gathers people’ echoes the pixel nature highlighted in Ching’s video work, and also the solidarity of people. The audience can take some leaves home as souvenirs and Hongkongers are welcome to add some leaves to the gathering of new landscapes and stories.

Weather Girl, Halo Daisy 天氣女郎
2016, Video, 6 mins 32 secs

What is a halo cloud? In the format of weather reporting narrated by a cheerful female voice, Lo Lai Lai Nathalie shares her records of emotions in Weather Girl, Halo Daisy (2016). It is her repertoire to deploy a lighthearted approach with superficially soothing trivial imagery to engage the viewer on heavy content, often of social and personal issues in the real world. The volume and temperature of sweat, tears and emotions can be detected in this video. Farming is a therapeutic process for the artist and she often sets a camera randomly in the field while she is at work. By chance the natural phenomenon of the halo cloud was captured. The clouds look calm on the surface, yet with the fierce undercurrents, the phenomenon is formed with a ring of rainbow in the everchanging conditions. This video is part of Lo’s ‘Slow-so TV’ series. The music chosen is Siko Horepse Sirtaki, a Greek folksong selected as the weather forecast music on TV in Taiwan in the 1990s.

Unlike ‘Weather Girl’, the level of expression and emotion on the surface has heightened in Lo’s ‘Cold Fire’ (2019-2020). One might be fascinated by the mysterious beings rippling through the sensual body of smoke, clouds or water. In the next scene, the viewer is on a plane with safety cards and a window view of clouds, eavesdropping on conversations about a mixture of fear of plane crashes and life and death:
‘Cut off her relationship with the iron bird.’
‘Floating on the ocean with her unknown companies, towards an unknown future.’
‘Do you know where we are heading?’
‘No, I don’t. I never do.’
‘It seemed calm looking from thousands of feet from above.’
‘Only because we could not see the thriving, indomitable bacteria.’

Black Bird Island 黑鳥島
2017, Video, 6 mins 32 secs

The video Black Bird Island (2017) by Yim Sui Fong stems from her interview with a former Hong Kong pigeon seller Mr. Leung Kam Hung and the history of the official 1997 handover celebration that the Regional Council of Hong Kong organised where thousands of pigeons transported from the Chinese border were released at the Sha Tin Sports Ground. Due to severe rainstorms, most birds could not return to their homeland and were stranded.

The artist creates a fiction with friction comprising multiple layers of social commentary based on two observations: a field study of the sky-coastline shaped by pigeon colonies since the handover in 1997 where the birds were being observed; and an encounter with a young girl being bullied where the bird becomes an observer. The jump-cuts bridge the story of the pigeons in Hong Kong, and through their lens into the psychological state of the society at the time.