Wood, TVs, mixed media, two-channel video
Dimension variable
video:
part one: http://vimeo.com/160582898
part two: http://vimeo.com/160586717
Tang Kwok-hin explores the layered nature of memory, nostalgia, and mediated experience across generations in In the Eighties Watching the Sixties’ Movies. Growing up in the 1980s, the artist’s impression of the 1960s was formed not through direct encounters but through flickering black-and-white Cantonese films, television dramas, and opera excerpts watched secretly at night on the family TV.
The installation features sculptural assemblages of distorted, film-inspired furniture made from wood and mixed media, paired with a two-channel video. On one screen, edited fragments of classic Cantonese feature films play; on the other, Tang himself recites and sings the dialogue and operatic passages that have lingered in his memory since childhood. These reconstructed domestic objects serve as portals, bridging the gap between the artist’s lived reality in the 1980s and his imagined vision of the 1960s.
Through this work, Tang reflects on how cinema and television shape our understanding of history and the past. The domestic interior — the shared space of watching — becomes the only reliable link between eras. By physically reconstructing these “furniture memories” and re-performing the lines, he materializes the hazy, romanticized, and often inaccurate impressions that mediated images leave behind.
