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Juxtaposed Tension Water Decay Buildout | BY: Teresa Leung | 2017 | Hong Kong
This place juxtaposes two spaces: the Tuen Mun River in Hong Kong--polluted yet still with some fishes and perhaps other organisms--and the infrastructure of the train, which is one of the major forms of public transportation in Hong Kong.
Is this what's called heterotopia--the type that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible? In this hard-to-define space, the sound of the flowing water, the few chirping birds, the passing train, and nearby moving vehicles also manifests the co-existence of spaces that don't seem to fit together.
The visual of the place displays similar contradictions and tension that reflects spatial injustice: the appealing visual composition versus the ruined, exploited and decaying nature. At the same time the abstractable, compartmentalizable visual structure echoes the mentality of nature being dispensable for further urbanizing an originally rural area--here with that cold, concrete pillar-supported structure that goes beyond the vanishing point.
ARTIST BIO
Teresa Leung exhibited their works previously in cities across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. A flaneur, Leung’s interested in the possibilities of urban non-places, art-as-an-experience, and "Soviet space" in post-soviet countries such as those in South Caucasus, which led them to join artist-in-residence programs in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan in both 2014 and 2015 and continue their exploration after. Their work received the Jury Special Mention in the 60Seconds Festival 2021 held in Copenhagen, Denmark. They were also one of the 40 finalists selected from more than 3,100 entries in the Contemporary Talents 2012 competition organized by the Fondation Francois Schneider in France.
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