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Leung Chi Wo 梁志和
Cecile & Marianna 思思與瑪麗安娜
2018
In Cecile & Marianna, Hong Kong conceptual artist Leung Chi Wo weaves together imagery of urban space with personal and historical memory and geopolitical affairs, all thematic touchstones in Leung’s practice.
The work opens and closes with snippets of songs by Peter Nelson and The Castaways, a 1960s band that originated in New Zealand. Leung reads a script as a still camera records scenes of Kings Cross, Sydney’s red-light district, and Central in Hong Kong. In the script, an unnamed male narrator recalls moving to Hong Kong in 1967 to play music at the Den, a club in the basement of the Hong Kong Hilton hotel. Political tensions of the moment—unrest in Hong Kong and the Vietnam War—manifest through stories of women accused of being spies: Cecile, who worked at the French embassy, and Marianna, a hostess at the Den who grew close to the future American president Richard Nixon. The work’s third protagonist is the Hong Kong Hilton—a long-since demolished building that was the city’s first five-star hotel and a site of protest during the 1967 anti-colonial riots. The narration of the two women’s lives, set against the backdrop of the hotel, highlights the melancholy passage of time and the lives entwined with it.
The work opens and closes with snippets of songs by Peter Nelson and The Castaways, a 1960s band that originated in New Zealand. Leung reads a script as a still camera records scenes of Kings Cross, Sydney’s red-light district, and Central in Hong Kong. In the script, an unnamed male narrator recalls moving to Hong Kong in 1967 to play music at the Den, a club in the basement of the Hong Kong Hilton hotel. Political tensions of the moment—unrest in Hong Kong and the Vietnam War—manifest through stories of women accused of being spies: Cecile, who worked at the French embassy, and Marianna, a hostess at the Den who grew close to the future American president Richard Nixon. The work’s third protagonist is the Hong Kong Hilton—a long-since demolished building that was the city’s first five-star hotel and a site of protest during the 1967 anti-colonial riots. The narration of the two women’s lives, set against the backdrop of the hotel, highlights the melancholy passage of time and the lives entwined with it.
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