This project is a personal interrogation of Hong Kong-Canadian intergenerational trauma
and the embodiment of a floating identity; one that incites a sense of
dis-belonging within both the self and world.
To unpack Hong Kong-Canadianness, then, is thus to theorise notions of identity and belonging as beyond a particular temporal and spatial setting. [no translation accessible] explores the possibilities of locating identity as both floating and grounded.
This multimedia project is a contention with embodied trauma that raises questions of implicit bodily memory, Hong Kong-Canadian identity, and accessibility –
recognizing that trauma is ingrained deeper than is ever fully accessible, or articulable.
As such, the scope of this project extends beyond linguistic translation.
Through drawing, photography, and film, I posit my body as an archive of memory, trauma, and subjectivity in a refutation of the traditional conflation of written Western history with truth and reconfiguration of the archive as objective and factual.
As a Hong Kong-Canadian diasporic subject, this is my way of rendering my subjectivity visible through capturing and editing photographs and film of architectural landscapes in Hong Kong and Canada. This is my way of articulating trauma beyond words, in tangible space beyond my body, yet on my own terms, for the very first time.
[no translation accessible] is not only a move away from written history, but also from definitive answers. The single drawing, edited photograph prints, and film loop aim to allow for multiple layers of time and space to be visible not only within, but across mediums. The project is named to acknowledge that the visual arts are not an authentic translator of nor catalyst for healing from trauma, but a method through which I am able to visibly and tangibly contend with Hong Kong-Canadianness beyond my body.
[no translation accessible] actively frames architectural landscapes of Hong Kong
and Canada through edited photography and a film loop to create an archive
that illustrates spatiality to flag the gaps within the depicted space(s).
I challenge the idea that a photograph is a visible memory frozen in time and place – that it is, in essence, locatable. In doing so, I posit photography and film as methods through which memories and emotions can be evoked while remaining untranslatable.
Every shadow in the exhibit space is a story inaccessible by virtue of its invisibility.
The stories are hanging by threads, barely visible, yet present.
Barely articulable, yet tangible, for once.
Accessible, somewhat.
In [no translation accessible], I bring contemporary understandings of the Hong Kong-Canadian diasporic body into conversation with trauma identification – both identifying the existence of, and identifying with trauma – in the visual arts. This project is my way of questioning the relationship between familial, intergenerational trauma, my embodiment of these histories, and engaging with what I embody,
beyond my body, on my own terms.
The project culminated in a solo exhibit show in Colorado Springs, USA in April 2019.
The multimedia gallery was comprised of twenty-eight 13x19 and fifty-one 5x7" prints. Together, the 81 prints combine almost 400 individual photographs
taken in Hong Kong S.A.R. and Vancouver, BC.
There were 11 layers of video playing at any given time throughout the film loop, and 7 layers of audio in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and French. My parents, two siblings and I speak (in)audibly of our collective memories and singular moments in the past; archiving personal experiences of joy, pain, and diaspora.
The drawing, titled "breathbone," is a 14-hour piece of my back after an energy/channel-clearing massage. As both the artist and the subject, I sought to visualise the traumas and tension I unknowingly hold. Drawing my body in a specific state - bruised and with reduced tension, its traumas brought to surface - was the beginning of my engagement with bodily memory on my terms.
© Christie Ma 2019.
