Nga-Chi YUEN

Nga-Chi Yuen, b.1994, Hong Kong

Nga-Chi Yuen obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2019. In recent years, she has explored the relationships of humans with animals from the historical, geographical, and political perspectives, observing the symbiotic state of the two. In 2020, Yuan was shortlisted for Justice Centre Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize with her work that traces hometown, village, and residents’ living conditions.

Yuen’s three-channel video centers around the Chinese White Dolphin to compose the blues of disturbance beneath human privatization of nature. Through the close-up shots of the city and ocean, along with the ecology of the white dolphins in the Pearl River Delta, the video calmly recounts their emotions of loss and conflict in the human city. The dolphins are never seen in the pictures. Instead, the viewers learn about the stories of the white dolphins later on from the voiceover—seen in many places of Hong Kong as a mascot and statues. The white dolphins were turned from fishermen’s taboo into a symbol today to commemorate Hong Kong’s handover. The blues of disturbance has gone beyond the destruction of natural ecology, further intertwined with and traversing between fishermen, local life, and the blood and tears in history. The fates of the city and the Chinese White Dolphin seem braided together, looking out for each other… (D.H)