Universes in Universe - Worlds of Art

49th Venice Biennale
10 June - 4 November 2001

Venice / 2001 / Pavilions / China - Hong Kong


Leung Chi-wo und Sara Wong Chi-hang: Interview
From an interview by Pat Binder and Gerhard Haupt.

Leung Chi-wo: The starting point for my work is always architectural space, or more precisely, the perception of the photographic representation of the space. I try to perceive the photographs in many different ways, not only visually, but also in a physical way, in that I equip them with a materiality so that they can be touched or walked through. In this sense, I have designed sculptures from the shapes of the sky, that is, from the negative shapes that result from the contours of the buildings. By directing attention to the negative forms, I make it clear that our perception of space is always based on positive forms.

The work that we are presenting for the Biennale is basically made up of two parts. We call the first one »Crossing Skies«. It's an installation of a coffee shop with 14 tables. The tabletops are photos of a piece of sky in Venice or in Hong Kong. In the center, there is a larger table with a picture in which the skies of both cities merge together. When you sit at this table you can see the reflection of the lamp above it, which was made based upon this »sky shape«.

The second part of the work, »City Cookie- Hong Kong/Venice Version«, is a collaboration with Sara. We had cookies made in the shape of the two skies merged together. Here in Venice, they're produced by a local bakery. They're available at different places in the city, but this café here is the main center.

Sara Wong Chi-hang: If someone wants a cookie, he or she has to give us something in return: a drawing, an object, or a note, with their name on the back.

LC: It's a kind of buying based on trust. It's not important how much or what we get in return, because in the end, each person decides what a piece of »edible sky« is worth to them. The »earnings« are then hung on the wall of the coffee shop.

SW: ... and the customer/visitor gets a token to buy a cookie from the vending machine.

LC: We've been working on projects like this since 1999. The first time we showed a project with basically the same concept was in New York, but we always do site specific works that take into consideration local details, in order to choose adequate objects and forms of presentation.

SW: Yes, we always begin with the local situation, and adjust the concept to it.

LC: In New York we used the New York sky, in Shanghai we used the sky of that city. This is the first time that we have undertaken a kind of dialog between Hong Kong and another city, in this case Venice.

SW: In a poetic sense, it's like we're sitting here under the Hong Kong sky and under the Venice sky at the same time.

LC: There are different aspects that allow for such a linking. Sight, language, and the mind connect the two spaces, but also when you eat a cookie, you use your body to connect the spaces.

SW: It's a project that seeks interaction with people... Here in Venice, for example, we've found that the people are very friendly and talkative. They enjoy going to cafés to spend time with friends... When we were setting up our installation, people came by to ask if this was going to be a new café.

LC: It's part of our idea to create this kind of confusion, because even though it's »art«, it looks like a normal café, and we want people to discover that themselves. Daily life is so close, we no longer see many of it's most important aspects. But there is always something new and unusual for us to discover.

SW: The work is discovered by the visitors through a fun process. We want to include fun in art. Art is not just serious. A big part of it is entertainment.

LC: ... and we play with the diverse ways of interpreting a work, because people coming from various contexts view the work from different perspectives, and understand it in different ways.
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© Interview, photos:
Gerhard Haupt & Pat Binder