Ellen Pau: What About Home Affairs?

The exhibition marks the first retrospective in Hong Kong of artist Ellen Pau, including  representative pieces of her multi-faceted artistic practice from the late-1980s to the present, such as video works, archives and a series of unpublished photographs.The title of the exhibition, both in the Chinese and English versions, revolves around the concept of family and home. The English one, in particular, reference the Hong Kong government’s Home Affairs Bureau, investigating the relation between civil political affairs and the personal sphere.

Among the works on show, the new augmented reality video work “I Don’t Have Time to Deal with Fear“, along with three previous major video installations here presented in their original uncut formats. Two of them are pieces from the “Pau’s Bik Lai Chu” series, which examines how social norms and gender stereotypes influence the female body.  The third is “Recycling Cinema”, which already represented Hong Kong in the 49th Venice Biennale: combining motion-picture techniques and electronic noises, the film records vehicles on a Hong Kong expressway over the course of 24 hours. In this way, the artist explores once more the rhythm of Hong Kong life and its historical and political events.