Preface
Since 2007, the Macao Museum of Art of the Cultural Affairs Bureau has organised the participation of Macao artists in the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, allowing a total of 18 local artists to showcase their works in the international prestigious art event. In the face of the pandemic, it posed challenges to participate in an overseas exhibition. Fortunately, thanks to the cooperation of Ung Vai Meng and Chan Hin Io – members of the ‘YiiMa’ Art Group – and the curator João Miguel Barros, as well as team members of the Macao Museum of Art, the exhibition was successfully held in Venice to wide acclaim.
A total of 11 sets (pieces) of exhibits were featured in the ‘Macao, China’ pavillion, including performance art documentation, photography, video and sculpture. The exhibition theme, ‘Allegory of Dreams’, echoes ‘Milk of Dreams’, the theme of the International Art Exhibition in Venice. ‘Yiima’ creates works with strong love for Macao; while reconstructing the image of the community through the prism of imagination, the artists present local characteristics in a manner neither overbearing nor self-effacing, having a frank dialogue with a global audience at the international art stage.
Full of drama and visual tension, these large-scale images can easily remind viewers of those magnificent Baroque domes, but they also remind me of the tissue sections under a microscope, peepholes in a door, or even crystal balls; they reveal the blurred lines between grassroots, the privileged and the holy, and are a summation of the past, the present and the future. A wide array of objects and traces of everyday life are like stacked ‘cultural layers’, with the dense details creating infinite viewing options, prompting viewers to become observers, rather than spectators, to rethink the polysemic nature of images and the complex visual experience brought by the rapid development of Macao in recent years.
The concept of ‘performance art documentation’ proposed by ‘YiiMa’ may need to be further deepened, but their artistic project to preserve the present with performance is quite skillful and forward-looking. These familiar settings (such as Kit Yee Tong, Mei Heng Cheong and the office in Iao Hon), are like reconstructions of identity, cultural context and social hierachy through moderate artistic adjustment and representation, rather than a candid portrait of life in Macao.
It is rare that the two artists of ‘YiiMa’, who seem to fly over the works, are not consuming, observing, peering into, or abruptly defining the older neighbourhood with typical artistic aloofness, but rather try to attract attention in a kind of humanistic approach full of care. In the exhibits, ‘YiiMa’ (‘twins’ in Cantonese) are further symbolised, or transformed into angels escaping into the commoners’ homes, or disguised as opulent emperors with infinite desires. In this way, therefore, the artists are not only the subject of the sketches, but also the object to be viewed. Projected themselves in the image of the Iao Hon emperors and guardian angels, ‘YiiMa’ highlights the so-called ambiguity between the master/resident and the passer-by. Through body interventions, the artists made possible the ‘empowerment’ of the site, and break the stereotypes that older neighbourhoods are no longer vigourous, so that residents can rediscover the powerful, magnificent, extraordinary liveliness and possibilities of these small, hidden and quiet corners and everyday spaces in the older parts of the city.
As art critic John Berger said in Ways of Seeing, ‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves’. The works of YiiMa allow overseas audiences to learn about the stunning secular beauty of Macao, while allowing locals to examine the symbiotic relationship between themselves and their surroundings. Once these works inspired by the ordinary Macao neighbourhoods were exhibited at such a famous international art venue, it is necessary to return to them, so that the public can have an in-depth understanding of the ongoing international development of local art, broaden their cultural horizons, and take pride in the ture colour of Macao – as a city where Chinese and Western cultures, as well as simplicity and pomposity, have long coexisted.
The success of the exhibition Allegory of Dreams proves that it is not a pipe dream for Macao art ‘to go international’. Although such endeavour would never be smooth, a journey of a thousand miles still begins with a single step. Based in Macao but with an international vision, the Macao Museum of Art will continue to encourage local art creation and work together with Macao artists to pursue the dream.
Un Sio San
Director of the Macao Museum of Art