Holes in Smoke

2020

What: An expanded publication in the form of a semipermeable curtain and website
Where: Artists’ Book Library, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong

Holes in Smoke is an expanded publication in the form of a semipermeable curtain and website that reveal glimpses of osmosis between personal and political violence through the smoke screens of power that serve to conceal their interconnected flows. Learning from the field of psychology, the author of Trauma and Recovery and psychologist Judith Herman shows us that we cannot understand trauma and violence individually but rather understood in a social context, whereby biological, psychological, geological, domestic and political dimensions of trauma are interwoven. 

Holes in Smoke thinks through trauma and violence as circulatory in nature. Five contributors, The Ultra Clan (CN/HK) + Cosmologists (SG), Clementine Edwards (AU), Hilda Chan (HK), Urok Shirhan (IQ/NL) and Czar Kristoff (PH) draw from their embodied positions on how big violence is carried everyday in the lives of those involved and reflect on how violence and trauma trickles and transmits into different spheres and across time. Each of their works are accessible by scanning the embedded QR code – portals that literally and figuratively become the holes in smoke.

For this project, I chose to speak through the contributing artists and from the seams as conduit, curator and designer. 

Holes in Smoke website: https://holesinsmoke.hotglue.me/


Photos by Hilda Chan