My work, PARADE series, was inspired by the parade initiated in Hong Kong over the past few decades.
It is a continuous project that I started in 2004, after I returned to Hong Kong from my artist-in-residency in the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuggart in Germany.
Since 1997, the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China from the British Government, Hong Kong has annual protests for the pursue of various social values. Most of the parades consolidated thousands of marchers and the one in 2004 consolidated 530,000 of people on the street. Prior to this, the pro-democracy protest in 1989 drew more people with 1.5 million marchers.
Amazingly, all of them were accomplished in extremely peaceful ways. Marchers are encouraged to go to the street with clothing of the same color.
I attempt the conceptual approach to explore the existence meaning of human beings in their cities through their interactions with the perverted environment and situation.
I have been working on this project for more than 10 years but the productivity is low comparatively. From the selection of locations to the precise retouched details, in average, each piece of the work take me at least two months to accomplish.
In this prolonged period of creation, I have never stopped rethinking our current circumstances. I reflected the crisis of disorder of our society structure and value with ordered heights deliberately. Is our mode of collective behaviour a self-demand or a consequence of the social consciousness? What is our genuine pursuit?
I carefully considered and chose the places to take the photos in this series, such as the old Star Ferry Pier in Central (Parade 5), where Hong Kong people protested against its demolition and struggled to preserve it, Dagongbao headquarters (Parade 1), the office building of Hong Kong Monetary Authority (Parade 4), Wanchai Pier (Parade 3) where dozens of Korean farmers jumped into the sea in 2005 when the WTO meetings were taking place, Bird’s Nest and Water Cube (Parade 7 & 8) which were the landmark architecture in Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and Central Police Station (Parade 11) which was also a landmark building of the colonial architecture in Hong Kong.
All these choices reflected certain types of social signal. I photographed the buildings and model on site first and duplicated the model with photo retouch. The repeated subjects shared the same gesture, the same clothing and the same poker face. People have become faceless with no personal opinion. They look at the same direction and they go towards the same direction. Combining these people with the background, the intended orderliness and apathy are my arranged abnormal unease reflecting the nihility of our existence in the world. It seems to be the prelude of the tempest of disorder.
