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M+, Hong Kong, © David Diao
David Diao 刁德謙
Da Hen Li cycle—Death on Tennis Court 大亨里：死在網球場上
2007
David Diao’s Death on Tennis Court is part of a cycle of works entitled Da Hen Li. Created between 2007 and 2008, the series unearths Diao’s memories of the Da Hen Li house, 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.
Death on Tennis Court is a painting that evokes Da Hen Li’s regulation-size tennis court, a significant motif in the Da Hen Li cycle. Diao used the court’s measurements as a point of reference in his project to reconstruct the scale of the compound, as well as his and his family’s fragmented memories of it. A dark olive-green canvas is divided into segments with white lines that suggest a tennis court. Running across the composition are the words ‘Father dies while playing tennis / New York, April 18, 1990’, written in English and Chinese. Diao’s memories of Da Hen Li and of his father’s death overlap, intensifying the significance of the tennis court, and adding a layer to his project of reconnecting with and reconstructing family memories.
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