Megan Tan, being monolingual with no knowledge of Chinese language, has decided to learn Cantonese—her mother’s first language.
Megan has tasked Madam Leong with answering some questions in Cantonese. The resulting exchange was recorded as an audio file.
Megan will not be attempting to interpret the Cantonese components of the recording until two years from now, when she speculatively will have sufficient grasp of the language. Five Australian-born friends of the artist with Cantonese backgrounds have listened to the audio file and attempted to interpret it. These contributions have been compiled and printed by a third party. Their contents are open to all but must be kept secret from the artist.
Still-life paintings of objects, collected out of a tenuous sinophilic impulse, dress the reading room. Like the sound work, they too are conceived from a naive gaze that will change over time.
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With contributions from Jennifer Fong, Alex Liao, Dominic Yau, Tiffany Goh, Leon Truong and Madam Leong.
To view the room sheet click here.