>> digital print on acrylic glass

Today, in our city, we always can see a variety of directives, signals, signs and symbols. They are telling us silently where we should go, where we should turn, where we should stop, where we could not move forward, where we must go backward, what we can do and what we are prohibited to do. Those signs have been embedded deeply in the scenes of our city. Nobody can erase and obliterate them which look like having been inherent in our environment and develop synchronously with the city. Our steps, more or less, follow these soundless directives and our sphere of activities is restricted indeed by these signs. As time passes, unconsciously, our behaviour of being obedient to this established symbol system has become our habit which has infiltrated gradually into our own flesh and blood. Consequently we feel that is natural and right with such obedient habit.

In the restriction of indispensable signs and symbols existing in nowadays city, I try to explore the relationship between people and city, and the degree of a compromise we should come to in the fact of living in a society. From people and the city order, I try to bring up a question that in this environment and this system, how we should confront and cope with by ourselves, how we seek for our own identity, in the meantime, we would be unlikely to pursue excessively and blindly to have an enormous ego.

Today and tomorrow, our city life will not go on without these directives and symbols, and can not escape from certain level of restriction. However, to restrict us whether is the sign and symbol environment, or is our state of mind of being settled in and used to our surroundings.

exhibition:

2004 “Today and Tomorrow” Macau Contemporary Photography Exhibition, Macao