Sea-Skins refuses and overwrites Hong Kong’s colonial narrative by tracing the places where sea meets land. These coastlines and borders have been artificially altered—dumping soil onto seas, used as bargaining pieces, neglected when inconvenient and heavily surveilled by land colonisers (british and chinese). Seasalt is a gift between sea and land for Hong Kongers.
Natalie Quan Yau Tso draws upon the philosophies, practices and political histories of salt-farming that have been performed on Hong Kong coastlines for 2000 years to make new sculptures. She excavates in the ways that land colonisers have oppressed the sea through performance scores, teardrop pearls, maps, the salt of Hong Kong seawater, and her own sweat. Tso’s flesh becomes the Hong Kong sea, centring new narratives instead of the boundaries that imperialism and colonialism have imposed.
This show has been made amidst the passing of Article 23 and the ongoing Palestinian genocide. It hopes to encourage viewers to keep evolving forms of resistance.
“My deep love and resistance for Hong Kong has leaned greatly on the strengths and hopes of Palestinian and Indigenous resistance worldwide. From the river to the sea, always was always will be.”
Image: Natalie Quan Yau Tso, All of this used to be Sea, 31x47cm, resin, map from 1998, teardrop beads, jumprings and contact paper, 2024.
