The context for Yiu’s exhibition “Everything is a Projection” is provided by a documentary-style film of the same name. In it, Yiu explains what it felt like to rediscover his childhood stash of Japanese comic books in Hong Kong during his first visit since the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
They smelled of damp and decay after being left in his family’s storage unit on rural Cheung Chau island, an unpleasant fug which was as much an olfactory trigger of childhood memories as that permanent hint of drains in Hong Kong and the fumes from ageing ferries plying Victoria Harbour, he says.
We are shown how Yiu tried to preserve one of his comic books by using a 3D scanning method called photogrammetry – a laborious process which nonetheless failed to capture the essence of a much-loved old book.
I want to create a spectacle about the most banal things
To reflect on what he sees as the marketing hype that surrounds such products, his Light Objects (2023) is a set of animated replicas of banal objects that only grab attention because they are projected on hologram fans.
“I like that they are valueless things, like a used sparkling wine cork and a computer mouse. I want to create a spectacle about the most banal things,” he says.
The replica of his desk, with all the objects left on it, is also flawed, like the virtual copy of the comic book.
As for Memory/ Data (2023), the glass cabinet with blocks of scented wax custom-made by Hong Kong company BeCandle, the effect is not quite as Yiu was hoping for.
He had designed a smell that resembles old books, he thought. But visitors seem to come up with different associations altogether.
“I thought that the work would add a new dimension of home to the show; it doesn’t necessarily end up that way,” he says.
The show, curated by Koon Yeewan, chair of the department of art history at the University of Hong Kong, who first met Yiu in Helsinki in 2021, may seem to suggest that home cannot easily be unmoored, its essentials tethered to a real place.
But Yiu explains that while he is sceptical of technology’s ability to provide us with a home, he is not convinced by a singular notion of “home” either.
The 32-year-old doctoral student of computer-generated imagery at Helsinki’s Aalto University left Hong Kong in 2017 to seek a different way of life, and has found that he is more suited to the culture and lifestyle of Finland than that of his place of birth.
We can no longer assume that an image is being made by one person using a single camera lens
“My relationship with Hong Kong is complicated. I grew up never wanting to join the rat race. I have never fitted in with mainstream Hong Kong. I’d always wanted to leave and see if somewhere else suits me better.
“As half a ‘digital native’, I am of a generation whose idea of home is a lot more flexible anyway,” he says.
Instead, he hopes that the show brings up the way technology is forcing us to consider “home” and the world around us from multiple perspectives.
“Like the 3D-printed desk, computational digital images are created from data sets. We can no longer assume that an image is being made by one person using a single camera lens. We need to understand the processes to understand what the images are saying,” Yiu says.
“Everything is a Projection”, WMA Space, 8/F Chun Wo Commercial Centre, 23-29 Wing Wo Street, Central, Tues-Sun, 12pm-7pm. Until March 31.
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