2009 / Video installation / 35 mins 18 secs; 31 mins 32 secs; 39 mins 8 secs; 35 mins 58 secs / Artist: Poklong Anading / Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, 27 Feb to 24 May 2009

Poklong Anading’s video installation titled Ocular was part of the exhibition Some Rooms held at Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, on 27 Feb to 24 May 2009. Envisioned by Eugene Tan, this program was the second in the annual series of exhibitions that “explore the curatorial and collaborative process.” The exhibition involved five curators from Southeast Asia who each engaged with two selected artists. The Singapore-based curator Isabel Ching worked with artists Louie Cordero and Ronald “Poklong” Anading. The floor space of the warehouse-styled Osage Kwun Tong measured 15,000 sq ft with a 14 ft high beam free ceiling. Curated to appear like several rooms, each artist was designated an enclosed space to realize their project.

Anading’s site-specific work is a four-channel video projected upon each wall of the room, the moving images scaled to take up the edges of the floor up to the ceiling. The artist’s video reconstructs memories evoked by his mother who worked as a domestic helper in Hong Kong. He referenced a collection of photographs she sent in the course of 11 years. Inscribed with a short description of the places she visited at the back of each photo, such mementoes made up Anading’s connection to his estranged mother. These clues allowed Anading to revisit these places, where he recorded the search using a video camera. These places were leisure areas like parks, malls, or tourist sites visited by his mother. Foregrounding spatial and temporal distance, Anading’s findings revealed how the landscape of Hong Kong had changed since his mother’s encounter with these sites: how these spaces looked different or were beyond recognition in relation to the dated photographs and that this in turn determined whether he would still find these places at all. By placing himself behind the camera, the artist’s revisiting of the places heightened a sense of absence even amidst his effort to create a shared experience. Anading was present in these spaces while his mother was not.

In the exhibition space, the landscapes captured by Anading are layered over by the shadows cast by the viewers who enter the room, suggesting a chance interaction. Resisting a single narrative, each video is looped separately, and their juxtaposed sequence is altered during each viewing. In Ocular, the artist emphasizes the fragmented quality of memories. He implicates the viewing public in the encounter of unfamiliar places and fleeting moments to which he himself testifies. In this project, Anading extends the bounds of the camera from merely an objective device. He proposes it as a medium that allows one to behold a world filtered through the artist’s desires and subjective experience.