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M+, Hong Kong, © David Diao
David Diao 刁德謙
Da Hen Li cycle—I Lived There Until I Was 6 (Chinese version) 大亨里：我六歲以前住在那裡
2008
David Diao’s I lived there until I was 6 (Chinese Version) 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.
I lived there until I was 6 (Chinese Version) is an acrylic work on canvas rendered in paper grey, red, and black. Resembling a page from a workbook for practicing writing Chinese characters, the painting comprises a gridded box containing text in neat, child-like handwriting: ‘Da Hen Li / I lived there until I was 6. When I returned to Chengdu 30 years later, it had just been demolished. There are no photographs. The only certain scale to rub up against my memories was the tennis court. I have since uncovered ciphers of its having been’. Reading like a journal entry, the painting reveals the sense of loss Diao felt for his childhood home, and acts as a point of departure for his mental reconstruction of Da Hen Li through this cycle. Diao also produced a painting with these sentences written in English.
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