Location:
Convention & Exhibition Centre,1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

VIP Preview:
2024.03.26-2024.03.27

Public Days:
2024.03.28-2024.03.30

MANGROVEGALLERY, participating for the first time in the Discoveries sector of Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, is delighted to present a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Tan Jing, Nook of A Hazy Dream. This project comprises several pieces of work, envisioning a return to an imagined homeland through the perspective of the fictional character Lap Hung (modelled after Tan’s grandfather, who re-migrated to China in the 1950s from Bangkok, Thailand). Since 2019, Tan Jing has been visiting separated relatives and the Chinese diaspora community in Thailand to record the oral histories narrated by her elders and their fragmented memories of Lap Hung. The project crafts a sensory experience with a rich array of media and materials such as spices, fabrics, glass, and floor tiles, thus constructing a space with multiple narratives. Interweaving visual and olfactory senses in varying languages, the project immerses us in the fading memories of Southeast Asia, embarking on a quest for Lap Hung.

Nook of A Hazy Dream (2023) employs a non-linear narrative to intertwine the dialogues between artist and the semi-fictional character, along with multiple snippets of oral histories from Lap Hung’s old acquaintances. These footages are projected onto glass plates embossed with water droplet reliefs and Begonia-patterned prints. The moist, hazy memories of Thailand transpire through these glass windows. The artist projects her vulnerabilities and thoughts onto Lap Hung, stepping into a world of elusive memories. The installation, through its visual and auditory elements and specially designed mediums, creates a tangible sense of immersion, exploring the displacement associated with the desire to belong and an uncertain identity. Centred around the recollection of memories, scents serve as a guide, leading the viewer into a narrative space lined with Floor Tiles and Flowers (2023). The aroma of Southeast Asian spices emanating from the broken floor tiles, and the fragrance of Thai talcum powder from the folded fabric flowers, place the artist’s private memories and vulnerabilities in between the stable and the precarious. The scents, concocted with the collaboration between the artist and a fragrance laboratory, utilise olfactory memory, which, unlike other types of memory, can rekindle emotions and recollections despite the passage of time.

The artist employs her sensitivity to the subtle, activating life experiences saturated with Southeast Asian culture through the sense of smell. The Souvenir (2024), fabric flowers inspired by Thai candy wrappers, tucks away compressed emotions and the feelings of displacement within their many folds, using the underlying remembrance of folded paper in East Asian culture to locate the transformation of personal sentiments. In the Nook of a Hazy Dream, the artist creates a space of multiple narratives with delicate treatment of various materials. By creating diverse sensory experiences, she gets in touch with overlooked or suppressed emotions; she empathizes with and investigates the complexities behind multiple identities and cultural identifications.