Yang Hoi Mei: Photography in Southeast Asia VI – Almost a Love Story

EVENT DESCRIPTION

“This exhibition is about my mother Susan, a third-generation Chinese Indonesian born in Pontianak in 1962. It was quite precarious to be a Chinese in Indonesia when she was growing up. The government pursued a policy of assimilation and closed down Chinese schools. Her family was also forced to relocate from the countryside to Jakarta. In 1990, Susan married a local Hong Kong (HK) fisherman whom she met through a matchmaker. Together, they had two daughters before her passing in 2015. A decade has passed before the opening of this exhibition.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, many Indonesian Chinese women saw HK as a dreamland. They believed that a transnational marriage with a HK man would allow them to move up the social ladder and escape from familial and societal issues back home. However, these relationships often involved underprivileged men in HK and might not turn out to be what they had imagined.

A few years back, I started to learn the skills for making Canton porcelain. As a kind of chinaware made primarily for export to Europe and the United States, Canton porcelain symbolised the Chinese desire for a better life and reflected the Western fantasies of an Oriental paradise. In my work, I appropriate the forms and techniques of Canton porcelain by reinterpreting the traditional symbols of its iconography and juxtaposing them with my collection of family photographs. In this way, I draw a parallel between these Western fantasies of the Orient and the Southeast Asian Chinese women’s imaginations of HK and China.

Family photographs typically depict a facade of happiness. While these snapshots capture the “that-has-been”, they do not always represent the full reality. The discrepancy between imagination and reality often leads to disappointment and hurt, which can be passed down through the generations. Dealing with these traumas requires us to break away from our obsession with beautiful symbols and to confront reality with courage. I do not speak Bahasa Indonesia and I seldom visit Indonesia; my impression of Susan can only be partial. By reliving her experiences through my artmaking, I gain a valuable opportunity to think about my own life. It is not a journey to “find roots” or excuses; I hope to understand how my thoughts and values have been shaped by family and migratory histories.”