2023

Media: Digital images, custom paint swatches, experimental text, chromogenic print on card stock 8 x 3 in.

Originally created as a digital response to an invitation for the 50th anniversary of the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC). In 2025, a physical iteration of the work titled, Paint Swatches for a Home (5 of 10), was presented on a billboard as part of the City of Vancouver’s Launch Pad project.

Connected by the Pacific Ocean, Vancouver and Hong Kong are both fluid gathering places. These two port cities have long been intertwined. On May 1,1983, the Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific landed at Vancouver’s YVR International Airport for the first time. The migration of not only people and objects, but sounds, smells, textures, tastes, temperatures, and languages have flourished through dedicated flight paths back-and-forth.

Paint Swatches for a Home seeped out of a family emergency that led me back to Hong Kong after being unable to return since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. Reflecting on the paint swatch-walls found in home renovation shops—transient locations for dreaming and imagining one’s future home—these colour fragments were sampled from personal photographs taken during an emotionally tumultuous time of frustration, joy and melancholy.