Through & Through

“Through & Through” is an interesting phenomenon. It can either describe the ability of someone process to discern thoroughly in various situations. Or, it illustrates something crystalline, flimsy, and gossamer-thin.  The idea of this project originated from my interest in “Clouds”, a natural, multi-faced, non-human generated transparent substance whose aesthetic, social, physical, and cultural interrelatedness with humans lead me into a state of stupefaction.

Voidness after voidness, an endlessly fleeting moment of heaven and earth. If its changes can create a duplication of me, that is not me at all.

 “Songs of the Floating Clouds” Lu Ping/Tang Dynasty

 Human imagination and interpretation of “Clouds” can be fascinating & magical. Its unorthodoxy, nonconformity, and uncontainable nature attract our adoration, inspire our creativity, and facilitate our vision throughout the centuries. However, due to its unreachable, and untouchable nature, their individualism defines the boundary between the mundane and celestial realm. “ Clouds” as a cultural symbol in Chinese tradition, have cultivated a strong value system from the ancient that dominates our daily beliefs, affecting our behavior, perception, and reasoning throughout the generations.

Chinese generally believes “Clouds” is a supernatural force of the sacred realm that brings prosperity. In other aspects, their appearance in literati landscape paintings enhances the classical aesthetics of arts, furthermore, on the gown and robe of the Chinese Emperors, they are also associated with the supreme sovereignty of the kinghood.

Being the sole heritage carrier of one of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Hong Kong, my research attempt to draw from multiple disciplines to unearth the largely forgotten history of the Cantonese Opera Costume industry in Hong Kong, its Pattern Design & technique, and cultural impact led me to a root-searching journey in 2009.   As the research brought forth questions about re-presenting and re-interpreting such a rich context in vertical and horizontal cultural perspectives, it ended up steered into projects and documentaries commissioned by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

Cultural languages, belief structures, and identity politics draw my effort to construct a description of the artistic vision and make visible the way these non-neutral interfaces contribute to the imperishable cultural imaginaries and elucidation to possibly render the uncertainty of our present situation.

When contemplating “Us” in Hong Kong, I wonder how the “Hong Kong Journey” will advance in the future. My research illustrates to me a picture of the striving spirit of the past generation, and helps reflect on the wider aspect of the way an individual grows, and a cultural community develops over time.  How should we define that reflection on time, struggles, achievement, or failure to become who we are now and/or in the future?

Presented by Lumenvisum & JC Studio_art

“Clouds” is one of the indispensable cultural symbols in the material culture of Cantonese Opera Costumes. In the past 6 years, I have been collecting research information as well as visuals of “Clouds” while traveling to Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Foshan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Canada, scrutinizing between “light & Shadow”, “Self & Surroundings”, and “Life & Lifelessness”, together with the development of the hypothesis of “Clouds”.

I want to get close to the clouds.

For ordinary people, getting close to the clouds seems impossible.  These days, we are falling into a discussion of the possibilities of AI, Digital, and ChatGPT manifestation and its threat or benefit to humans.

These tools become handy for me to actualize my dream.

Taking ” Clouds” as a subject, this digital work attempts to allure our eyes with its multifaceted beauty and transfigured attributes, as the digitally generated images compete for their position against the naturally formed images.

In the end, the question for the spectator is, ” Can you identify the difference between digital images and natural images? And what about their influence in life?

This clip simply captures a walk to Lau Fau Shan, an authentic moment during its closing when COVID-19 hit the world in July 2020. At its closing, the unusual quietness, the surrounding sound, and the atmosphere cover the main street from the entrance to the end with sadness. A time of death and despair hovering over the world that takes away people’s health, social activities, hope, joy, and freedom without prior notice or alternatives.

Lau Fau Shan (which means floating mountain in Chinese), reminds locals or visitors of the past history of Hong Kong by keeping the spirit of the fishing village that assimilates the old Hong Kong Village. Also, it is a unique geographical corner facing Shekou in Shenzhen, China at the shore of Deep Bay of the Yuen Long District of Hong Kong, where one can see both Hong Kong and China in one spot.

A village like this becomes a precious jewel in Hong Kong, it resembles the beginning of the city, fishing port, village life, and community spirit. It used to harvest about 100 tons of oysters every year for local and neighbouring countries other than its historical remains, marine products, and beautiful sunset, but fewer local inhabitants stay there now to continue the oyster culture.

At the end of this video, I am standing at the opening area to look at both sides of the horizon, Hong Kong and China, I am pondering about what the future will bring.

Holding on to our culture

Peeking through it in time

It seems far off yet nearby

Traditional Chinese culture not only has material forms (such as Cantonese opera costumes), but also its philosophical thoughts. The ways to present this subject in the various media and methods of contemporary art (such as video, and multimedia), on one hand, convey our thinking, interpretation, maintenance, and development of traditional culture today; on the other hand, it links with the present moment, to view the present and the future with the wisdom of traditional culture, and its inspiration to reach a thorough view of history and life – that is the question we discuss and share.

Moderator: Jeff Leung/Independent Curator

Image Artist: JC Jessie

Project Curator: Gan Ting

In <Through & Through – An Image Experiment by JC Jessie>, JC Jessie snaps everyday visual content to lead viewers’ appreciation of the cultural and reality uncertainty by engaging their senses through vision, sound, and body movement. Her art reveals an individualistic perspective and artistic language, inviting others to her historical and realistic orbit. In exploring structural and fundamental questions, no peremptory answer is given but rather hints at a shared exploratory path through a visual process of observation, reflection, and experience as she believes that life is an experiment in various aspects.

Jessie’s works deliver values exploration to the viewer’s retrospective gaze at faded and profound history and a direct recounted of complex and chaotic reality. However, against these seemingly heavy tasks, her guiding approach is always light attainable, and ethereal.

The selection of the theme ‘Tòu’ is vivacious, playful, yet contemplative, other than its multiple meanings to suggest the transcendence of our visual and rational abilities, the images of clouds with their changeability of light, shadow, and shapes, and the application of various contemporary mediums amplify the project into a contemporary extract and rendition, unprocessed and approachable.

‘Cloud Pattern’first appears on the primitive-colored pottery of the Neolithic period, the artist’s research and artworks on the material culture of Cantonese Opera Costumes align the ancient to the present when her rumination echoes the depths of history and cultural traditions. One of the experimental artworks opts for an unusual photographic experiment to shake our usual perception of Chinese paintings. Mirrors used to be a decorative element on the warrior costume in the Cantonese Opera Costume, now engraved with traditional Chinese landscape elements in a fetching installation that loses its original usage and leaves behind blurry images that rack our perception with deceptive impressions. The representation of art, the distinction between truth and falsehood, and the contemporary ‘viewing’ of traditional culture are all the questions Jessie throws at us through her exceptional lightsome approach. She declines to leave any conclusion to our daily subjectivity but rather welcomes a philosophical discourse of space, time, and destiny, where people, contradictions, experience, and day-to-day living seem to form a river of time in her lens, flowing towards the end of a molten sunset.

“The body of the cloud, gathering and dispersing differently: light as smoke, heavy as mist, floating as haze, gathering as vapour.”[1] Can we truly see through clouds, mists, smoke, haze, and vapour, changing and disappearing in myriad ways?

Gan Ting

Independent Curator, Art Critic, Dual Master’s degree in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature, Curating & Art History; Former Executive Director of the Shenzhen Zhi Museum

 Photo & Video Credit : Knocknock Avant

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