Round Table (Right)
2016
For her first solo exhibition at PAPER, Ange Ong presents her off-kilter pastel dreamscape café scenes, through which she explores memory and identity, in particular the arbitrariness of signs and symbols one uses to recognise “home”. She relays her own experience of duality, being part of the Hong Kong diaspora in New York and of the changing nature of the Hong Kong landscape after the 1997 British handover to China. The colonial presence of British brands in Hong Kong life, which then become used as symbol of the familiar when transplanted to New York in a simulation of “home”.
The mimicry of the Hong Kong café, replete with décor, ornaments, plastic utensils in Ong’s stilted foam and card life-size sculptures is captured in her photographs, adding a further layer of distance between the artist and her capturing the intangible essence of “home”. Ong uses this replication to study the phenomenon of a whole generation of international residents and the idea of belonging.
The mimicry of the Hong Kong café, replete with décor, ornaments, plastic utensils in Ong’s stilted foam and card life-size sculptures is captured in her photographs, adding a further layer of distance between the artist and her capturing the intangible essence of “home”. Ong uses this replication to study the phenomenon of a whole generation of international residents and the idea of belonging.
Round Table (Left)
2016
Cups and Two Fishball
2016
Bowls and Fruits
2016
Clock with Flowers
2016
Staff Lunch
2016
Five Dollars Pastries
2016
Cat at Cashier
2016
Breakfast Set A
2016