Amy Cheung's solo exhibition, "Atom Ocean"
Amy Cheung’s solo exhibition, “Atom Ocean: Once we are dead, we don’t have to worry about dying anymore,” features 12 sculptures of herself – four made of ice, eight of sand – that will dissolve into one another to create an ocean. She talks to Alexandra Carroll just as the ice begins to crack.
HK Magazine: How does it feel to watch your work falling apart?
Amy Cheung: This one here has already started to disintegrate. The ice sculpture has already started to become flimsy, and this is only the beginning. Actually, this is a disaster – to think of building it and then it will be all gone. It makes me nervous to watch it fall.
HK: This is an enormous sculptural piece. How will it work, exactly?
AC: The icemen are in a tank attached to draining tubes. The long tubes are connected to the heads of each of the sandmen. The water will eventually melt them and it will become an ocean again. I wanted to make an ocean inside the space, to return these figures to their original form.
HK: Is there an ecological edge to the exhibition?
AC: Definitely. I have these things in the back of my head. Like recycling – even of people, like reincarnation. I believe things happen because of connections. Like the tube here, which connects these sculptures – it’s like the connection between people, things and events.
HK: Is that why there is a reference to death in the title?
AC: This was partly inspired by my trip to Tibet. My friend and I were walking around the mountain and we found the place that used to be the sky burial site. It’s forbidden [to bury people there] now but people leave the shoes and clothing of their loved ones there. We saw a father, crying loudly and holding a child. Suddenly, he turned and the body of the child just flopped and I saw it was dead. I could see the soul was gone – I was shocked to see bodily material that had just become a thing, doll-like and impotent. It made me think about the impermanence of our participation in this world.
HK: Why choose the ocean as your metaphor?
AC: One day I was on the beach at Stanley, and I imagined these sculptures coming up out of the ocean and thought it would be a good metaphor about life, death, attachment and detachment. An artist’s work is like their child – and I’m going to see it destroyed in front of my eyes. That will be something new for me.
HK: There is a lot of sand here – is it going to get messy?
AC: Probably. Messiness was the plan.
