This set of
works are the result of "Artist in Residency in Hospital" programme
curated by Art in Hospital. I collaborated with SHINE Recovery
Centre of Psychiatric Department in Kowloon Hospital for about 6
months.
I can never discern who
is the patient; and I have never intended to.
When the rehabilitants
showed me around the hospital, they told me their stories. Some of
them told stories that spanned 30 years, while the others simply
said they were loath to speak a word. Being an artist who met these
rehabilitants by chance, it was neither suitable nor respectable to
excavate their stories. However, the places they recalled, the
events they were eager to share, the approach of their narration and
the parts they didn't want to look back on are all imprinted on my
mind.
My paintings are filled with the places where these rehabilitants
once stayed. The rehabilitants revisited the past from their angles
while I visualised it from my perspective, in which the concept of
psychiatric becomes irrelevant and the impression of the hospital
fades away; the function-oriented hospital becomes a living space
filled with the rehabilitants' experiences and feelings. The
uncertain world is at no time predictable. Nevertheless, I know that
Kowloon Hospital, which was built almost a century ago, has been
already recognised as a valuable historic building.
