CURTAIN 簾 幕
Bornin 1992in S henz hen. Lives and wor ksin Guanghou. z
22 A dog has come and left behind a trail of clues throughout the exhibition space for visitors to piece together what may have taken place. The artist imagines her grandfather has reincarnated as a dog and in his new form, pursues memories of scent and taste from a life spent in the subtropics, unfurling the forgotten personal histories. Tan Jing’s grandparents repatriated to China from Thailand in the 1950s, and she often senses their grappling with personal identity and their failing to belong. Any mention of pain or vulnerability, was frowned upon, which compounded the artist's struggles to express these issues in a patriarchal household. This upbringing has had a significant impact on Tan’s practice, which gravitates toward the sensitive, poetic, and ambivalent. The result is an expression of ‘fragility’, a nebulous, obscure, indefinable, or even imperceptible exploration into the materials and medium of sculpture. Through this site-specific installation, Tan experiments with olfactory memories as a medium to shape one's self-awareness and explore the intangible emotions that linger on between different generations of migration.
