Project 9_9 (roots)

This series is based on a two-year project encompassing over 120 meetings/images through which I explored my identity as a foreign artist in Italy. I was born in Hong Kong, have lived in three continents and through all my visits and friendships, I have always felt a special sense of connection with Italy, a country with which I have no biological roots with. So, 3 years ago I asked if I were to spend a significant period of time in Italy, "how would I fit in?" I undertook a dream-like journey looking at art pieces and meeting artists all over Italy, and solicited meetings and photo-taking sessions with those whom I feel an empathy. The "dual-self-portraits" became a shared experience, a capture of their essence and "ours" and the images a snapshot of the overall dialogue and rapport. The process of me entering the scene which I had setup is likened to the process of me adapting into their environment as a foreign artist. It is therefore not an ordinary selfie whereby one can preview one's look before taking the shot. Before the portrait-taking, I usually research on the artists' background in order to get close to what I believe to be their essence. The body of works scheduled be published by SKIRA in May 2017. As Carl Jung would say, we make our decisions with a strong influence by the unconscious (a storehouse of repressed memories specific to the individual and our ancestral past), a few years of exploration can only uncover what might take a lifetime and beyond to be ever known. Amongst the many questions that people have asked: why artists? where do you feel are your roots? These questions would be partly answered by the essays and interview of me by my curator Fortunato D'Amico (Curator at Fondazione Pistoletto). These two questions, however, are tied together in my answer. I don't believe that my roots are physical but transcendental as I feel that I am a soul in a body which happens to be Chinese by appearance. What nourishes me is creativity across the board of humanity. Like Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of my subjects, I believe that art inspires and improves humanity in all sorts of channels. I believe that if we are more conscious of ourselves and can therefore unleash more of our individual potential, our society (which is more than a sum of individuals' contribution) would also benefit. However, as Jung would also say "a million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one", so we need to work on ourselves as individuals in order to improve our society. Where I feel my roots is perhaps where I could awaken more of my unconscious and for the time being it has been this project in Italy which inspires my creativity and connects me to the others' creative spirit. It is a privilege to be an artists and I feel a responsibility to the society as an artist, to encourage new ways of seeing/thinking/feeling. Self-portraits have always been used by artist to explore self-identity, so these "dual-self-portraits" ask the question of relational identity. Perhaps, there would have been more people with whom I may have enjoyed meeting and there is always that one other portrait that I could take. In any case, the unconscious is a mystery and life cannot be discovered within anyone particular project alone. (My first book "Fragments of Grey Matter" which won a prize in Japan explored part of that in another form but it also explored the concept of perception and unconscious)