Family and home may be two different kinds of notions, but they share a common origin. A home can tell how a family is, as the environment may reveal emotions. The lead title of this exhibition is "Paradise", which on the surface means a happy land, representing the expectation of a home by ordinary people and how an ideal family should be. The society has too many inherent definitions of home/family. A family not fitting into the conventional model will make one feel it is not a real family. This limitation also causes social problems. Nevertheless, is it just a question of definitions, or the family itself does indeed have a problem?

Last year, Jane Lei (J) cooperated with a social welfare organization in a documenting program, where she got into contact with women from different backgrounds. They are all mothers whose families are defined as 'broken'. After in-depth interviews, J, together with another artist Lego, wanted to visualize the topic by showing, in visual and audio formats, the collected texts, letters, images and drawings, and re-organizing them in a derivative piece of work against the setting of an ordinary home, in order to re-create the feeling of home/family from the artists’ perspectives.

As the centerpiece of the exhibition, texts cover every corner of the venue. Shredded documents are spread all over the ground, and 385 letters (539 pages), from a respondent to her parents, are pinned onto the wall.  Love is the essence of everything. Each of those people you have met represents a side of yourself; family members closest to us, such as our parents, child and life partner are like mirrors for us.  The relationship with them, the affection between and the feelings towards each other, and the emotions triggered therefrom, reflect a world, in a familial, societal and universal sense, and they are all interrelated – that’s what prompted J and Lego to present, through their works, stories of these women whom they have never met before. Their experience may have an echo in us for its similarities, and there is always something that touches our hearts.

Text fragments of the interviews are scattered on the furniture in the exhibition space, as if voices by themselves. The heartbreaking yet touching words intended to be kept private, seem to mirror every female or indeed everybody’s experience. But, will you carry it on your heart to become a burden? Or take it as something to be overcome and go forward? ‘Two sides of a coin’ is the theme of this exhibition. Maybe you will feel sad or inspiring after visiting it.  No matter how, you are welcome to stay in this home, to think or daydream. The picture of all kinds of people evokes mixed feelings, and with purity one realizes emptiness.

Cora Si

Curator