Thinking about diaspora in my practice
For the past few years, I've been thinking more about how being a member of a diaspora has impacted on my life, and how I might represent this in my work.
I was born in Hong Kong and migrated to Australia as a child. I often feel like I don't belong - something that many cross-cultural folks have experienced. I am pretty much Australian in a lot of ways, having spent all but my first two years here, but I'll always be a visible minority. Along with that comes the casual (and overt) bigotry. For instance, I used to refuse to speak Cantonese in public unless it was with family, because of the hostile reactions from passing strangers. I grew up wishing I was a white person, because people might've been kinder - for instance, I used to be chased by groups of white boys yelling racist epithets on my way home from school.
Since I've hit my "fuck you 40s" era, I don't care what people think anymore - I want to embrace and celebrate my cultural identity, as an act of survival and defiance. Hence the shedding of my western name and reverting back to my Chinese name on the eve of my 40th birthday.
My family often noted that their memories (and through their stories, my impressions) of Hong Kong are forever stuck in 1985, the year of our migration. Basically, we lived in a transplanted Hong Kong bubble, endlessly consuming grainy VHS tapes of shows and movies lovingly sent by relatives back in Hong Kong. Clinging onto nostalgia was our way of coping, until we could eventually accept our future through forging new identities as Australian citizens. Regardless, I have felt between cultures - on the one hand, experiencing a Hong Kong in stasis, while on the other, experiencing everyday life in modern-day "Australia" overlaid like a moving stream.
In a lot of ways, I'm grateful that we did live in this transplanted bubble. For instance, I'm a reasonably-fluent Cantonese speaker, although I never learnt to read or write Chinese. I know some of the important dates of the Chinese calendar and the rituals around them. On the other hand, there is always an undercurrent of displacement and disorientation, and of lost knowledge. While I cling onto my ancestral roots, being so physically far away has meant there's a lot of gaps to my cultural knowledge.
One way I've been exploring this displacement and disorientation is through the poetry of Wang Wei, a Tang-dynasty poet. This one, called Lake Yi, was particularly poignant to me.
Lake Yi
Blowing flutes cross to the distant shore.
At day’s dusk I bid farewell to you.
On the lake with one turn of the head:
Mountain green rolls into white clouds.
(translation: Pauline Yu, 1980)
I released an EP in 2024 called Alone Along White Clouds, I Return based on a selection of his poems, alongside some accompanying videos that are best described as audio-reactive digital paintings. It was cathartic to make the track, thinking about the trajectory of my family's journey from flying across the sea, our lives packed neatly into three suitcases, to land in a city with no connections, then slowly forging a new life. It was also important to me to create work combining ancient Chinese poetry with contemporary Australian field recordings - it was a way of both acknowledging the long cultural roots I have, and where I am now.
This year, I've been fortunate to connect with another artist, Clarice Yuen who is also part of the Hong Kong diaspora, and we're both thinking of ways to meld our experiences and practices into a series of works. It's been great to bounce off another person who understands.