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M+, Hong Kong, © David Diao
David Diao 刁德謙
Da Hen Li cycle—All I can remember 大亨里：我依然記得
2013
David Diao’s All I Can Remember is part of a cycle of works entitled Da Hen Li. Created between 2007 and 2008, the cycle unearths Diao’s memories of his childhood home in Chengdu, China. Diao lived at Da Hen Li until the age of six, when he emigrated to Hong Kong, shortly before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Thirty years later, upon returning to his home town for the first time, Diao discovered that his former family residence had recently been razed to the ground, leaving almost no record of its existence. Comprising paintings of various sizes and media, including hand-drawn and ruled floor plans, silk-screened property deeds, laser-printed sketches, and texts in English and Chinese, the cycle is the artist’s attempt to trace his childhood through a personal recollection of Da Hen Li’s spaces.
All I Can Remember is a long rectangular painting with a dark umber background. Towards the right side of the canvas, a vague architectural plan of the Da Hen Li house is drawn with white lines, its spaces labelled in light blue. The rectangular plan of a tennis court—a motif in this cycle, and a touchstone for Diao in his reconstruction of the Da Hen Li house—stands out from the rest of the composition. The painting is annotated with Diao’s memories in relation to the spaces of the compound.
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