Yuen Nga Chi's solo exhibition Monuments: Flipper, Ada and Honey - Chapter 2: Honey is on view at Art Center Ongoing, Japan.
“Monuments: Flipper, Ada and Honey” is a series of works created by Hong Kong artist Yuen Nga Chi starting in 2019, focusing on the relationship between dolphins and human beings, including captive breeding practices, artificial propagation, and the commemorative significance of the dolphin as a symbol, for example, it is used in Hong Kong as a mascot for the handover or as merchandise for sale in amusement parks.
Following on Chapter 1: Ada – the world’s first wide-snouted dolphin born through artificial insemination, discussing the relationship between dolphins and Hong Kong. This exhibition ‘Chapter 2: Honey’ at Art Center Ongoing in Tokyo takes its name from a female bottlenose dolphin that was abandoned in an aquarium in Chiba Prefecture, Japan in 2018 after the aquarium closed down due to business difficulties. The artist stayed in Japan for about six weeks, exploring dolphin-related paths in Tokyo City, Choshi City in Chiba Prefecture, and Taiji Town in Wakayama Prefecture.
The exhibition features video and photos taken at several aquariums and zoos, including the Inubosaki Marine Park, where honey was abandoned, as well as other places where dolphins have been used as decorations or landmarks, such as Choshi Station, the Inubosaki Lighthouse, and the streets of Taiji Town, and a variety of dolphin-shaped merchandise is also featured in the exhibition in an intriguing way. The artist seeks to understand the position of the dolphin in Japanese humanities from the perspective of an outsider, and attempts to sort out how the same species is perceived in the two distinct cultural contexts of Hong Kong and Japan. The artist takes a distanted perspective to observe the environment, form and condition of animals in captivity in the two places, and further considers how this difference can be understood.
Text and image courtesy of Art Center Ongoing.
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