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The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure), 2014

2014
Installation
Mixed Media, Embroideries, Fabrics, Foam, Wood, Paper
2.4 x 7.5 x 9m

Selected Exhibitions
2014 “Encounters”, Art Basel, Hong Kong Artist Statement

Artist Statement
Not wanting to stage a venue for reactionary measures, The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure) provides a space for contemplation and explores the irrepressibility of time under the state of one country two systems in Hong Kong. The way of life in Hong Kong is being subtly influenced amid ‘Chinese Reunification’ and there is a recent attempt to introduce ‘National Education’ to Hong Kong’s education system. The new scheme has been critiqued as patriotic brainwashing upon the younger generation and The Remnant of My Volition Series (2013 – Ongoing) can be seen as a silent protest by Wong towards that. The new installation carries on Wong’s meditative act of peeling off red flag stickers and revealing the empty/white flag as a sarcastic surrendering to the system. Upon closer examination of a white wall, fifty thousands empty/white flag are revealed beneath the sea of sticker papers as if nothing have happened by far. Cushions embroidered with fifty years calendars, starting from 1st July 1997 until 30th June 2047, complete this stage for ponderation. The work speaks of an ad hoc city state of Hong Kong* being subjected to become an impossible/fictional nation, if volition means making a conscious choice, volition is never really conscious in the end at a place deprived of the power or confidence of self rule.

*Acclaimed academic Ackbar Abbas mentioned the sense of the temporary of Hong Kong as ‘a doorway, a point in between’. See Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, 4.

MorganWong_2014_Remnant of my volition force majeure 1
Installation View at Art Basel Hong Kong 2014

MorganWong 2014 Remnant of my volition force majeure 2
Details of Stickers on Wall

Morgan Wong 2014 Remnant of my volition force majeure
Details of Cushions’ Calendars Embroidery

Morgan Wong 2014 Remnant of my volition force majeure 5Details of Stickers on Wall

Morgan Wong 2014 Remnant of my Volition Force Majeure 6Details of Cushions’ Calendars Embroidery