Hong Kong Palace Museum | The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: A Day in the City — An Experimental Study of Things Across Time

Flanking the artwork are side-by-side imagery of the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City and Yung Shue Tau (Banyan Tree Head, now Yau Ma Tei Community Centre’s rest garden) in Yau Ma Tei, conveying how both places, past and present, carry the collective memories that connect people together. As part of this cross-temporal dialogue, the artwork uses childlike brushstrokes to depict disheartened forest elves fortunately accompanied by friends from “The Monsters” series, reminding adults weathering the world’s trials to go forth and be brave. No matter how eras shift, old friends and familiar places will always quietly await you.

This work originates from the experience of gazing up at the stars and moon during a nighttime walk, drawing inspiration from ancient wisdom that used the Big Dipper to determine direction and the rotation of its handle to mark the changing seasons. The installation reconfigures the logic of celestial rotation using modern-day materials. As viewers shuttle through the space, they perceive the flow of time and surrounding objects. When guided to look up at the Polaris that ought to remain fixed, they gradually become aware of the inherent fragility and uncertainty of all reference coordinates.

Imagining the daily life of a Qing dynasty emperor relocated to Hong Kong, this work reimagines imperial scenes from the Forbidden City, such as morning court sessions and imperial meals are reconfigured within iconic local landscapes like the Victoria Harbour skyline, local cha chaan teng, and the West Kowloon Cultural District. Through on-site observation and creative sketching, the project explores playful intersections where historical legacy and contemporary urban life converge.

While the ancients contemplated nature through scholar’s rocks, modern humanity relies on mineral-based silicon chips to explore the unknown. This work utilises Hong Kong’s meteorological data and algorithms to cultivate a “breathing” stone within a virtual world. Through image-slicing technology, intangible time is given tangible form, dynamically reorganising the internal texture of the stone in real time according to the city’s changing weather. This digital-age experiment in the investigation of things (gewu) invites viewers to journey through a spacetime tunnel woven from technology and nature, and witness the rhythm of the metropolis transforming into an ephemeral geological spectacle.

This work bridges two eras through a dialogue between Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, and his obsession with cycling inside the Forbidden City, and the youth culture of modified street bicycles in 1980s Hong Kong. Puyi’s collection of bicycles at Jiangxue xuan and his employment of stunt riders within the palace subtly mirrors the spirit of Hong Kong’s street bike culture. Despite being separated by nearly a century, both phenomena reflect the release of raw adolescent vitality through bicycles—using novel objects to establish self-identity, assert unique tastes, and capture the beauty of youth amidst restlessness and creativity.

This work draws its inspiration from authentic historical architectural plans, reinterpreting traditional Chinese elements through contemporary material technologies. The project transforms the layout blueprint of the Shenji ying (Divine Mechanism Corps) barracks into luminous windows, converts the Construction Drawings of the Sacred Tree in the Hall of Prosperity Initiation, Yong Mausoleum into a modern feng shui potted plant, and translates the proposed restoration drafts of the Forbidden City’s Meridian Gate to Zhengyang Bridge Archway into three-dimensional geometric forms. Together, they resemble ancient artefacts discovered within a sci-fi film or video game setting. The installation evokes a striking sense of temporal dislocation, feeling as though it were a bizarre archaeological discovery unearthed from a fictional civilisation.

This work is inspired by a simple afternoon daydream: a playful moment when young children in a neighborhood park imagine building a massive garden playground together. From this starting point, the piece creates a vision of city and nature coexisting in harmony with dreams of an ideal community. Told through the eyes of a child, it connects people, the city, and all living things, capturing the timeless poetry of sharing our world together.

Chaconne of the City takes the traditional “twelve double-hours” (ancient Chinese timekeeping) as its structural backbone, embedding Hong Kong landscapes within a continuous trajectory of space and time. Twelve uninterrupted chapters flow in a perpetual time loop, following a sequence of twelve distinct harmonic chords. As moving perspectives shift the scenery in motion, geographical territories subtly overlap with temporal orbits. The traditional concepts of the five elements and yin-yang are transformed into an underlying structure, imparting rich audio-visual layers through thermal and tonal transitions. Blending Chinese and Western elements, the music reflects Hong Kong’s cultural heritage and contemporary tensions, guiding viewers into a temporal fortress to rediscover a serene, poetic refuge.

The scientific community holds that the earliest fish emerged during the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago. Whether as sustenance, aesthetic subjects, or vital motifs in religion, mythology, art, and literature, fish have long held a profound place in human civilisation—enduring, in the words of the Book of Poetry, “like the moon advancing to the full”.