“Her hands are as soft as catkins, her skin is as white as cream, her neck is like a unicorn, and her teeth are as sharp as a gourd.” (Wei Feng: The Great Beauty)
Lipid (Fat) is a shared substance that exists across the realms of plants and animals. The fluidity of fats, oils, or waxes, their mutable hues, and their potential for energy storage and combustion often evoke a wide range of associations. From a cartographic perspective, Gulangyu Island (historically known as “Yuanzhou Island”) resembles an elliptical droplet of solidified fat embedded within the veins of the ocean. The ceaselessly moving vessels and travellers navigating its surrounding waters appear as free-floating agents, continuously absorbed and transformed by this adipose entity.
Lipid is our vessel. Suppose we draw a connection between Gulangyu and lipid and view it from a translucent perspective. In that case, the island’s plants, histories, and human memories emerge as a layered tableau of overlapping shadows. From surface to core, one layer reveals the “South Seas Pearl” of Gulangyu, a cosmopolitan “Garden on the Sea,” showcasing the spectacle of the “Expo of Nations.” Another layer unveils its role as the historical locus of “Hai Bang Sheng Fu” and the rich legacy of overseas Chinese remittances, a “Dunhuang of diaspora.” Beyond these, a further layer manifests as the “World Heritage” sanctuary of slow symbiosis, while yet another speaks of the transoceanic labour ports—sites of compression, enclosure, and occupation.
Through the “lipid wisdom” that is compatible with each other through reviewing heating and thinking cooling, the residency exhibition “Lipid: Soft and Halcyon” seeks to swiftly construct and share a discursive state surrounding the ephemeral encounter with a specific landscape and its culture. Materiality forms the outer expression of Fat, while language constitutes its core. Historical perspectives or emotional states, once softened, interact with time in varying degrees from the visual to the olfactory—mirroring the interplay between (para-)fictional narratives and human conditions. Kingfishers and green light, like lipid, are both tangible and illusory. We welcome you to immerse yourself in the discourse of Lipid: to metaphorise, to describe, and to linger within and reflect upon the archipelago of ideas it presents.
Curator: Roxy Y.Tang
Artist: Lean Lui
Residency Time: 16-27 Dec. 2024
Exhibition Duration: 28 Dec. 2024-28 Feb. 2025
Venue: Juanzong Cabinet of Lohkah, Gulangyu Island, Siming District, Xiamen City, Fujian Province, CN.
*More details please click here. (Originally published in Chinese)
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 