Visual Art:

 Lessons

Gallery TPW, Toronto

National Gallery of Canada (CMCP), Ottawa

VU PHOTO, Quebec City

Lessons

Photography (chromogenic prints)

Set of 25 images

Dimensions: 20" x 24" ea.

Year: 2000

 

Artist's Statement

 

In 1998, I traveled back to Hong Kong to revisit my elementary school, La Salle Primary. Two decades had passed, yet there were the schoolboys in the same uniforms, moving through the same everyday routines. I was immediately transported to my own time as a student. Under British rule, we had enjoyed a relatively liberal education. Colonial Hong Kong was never perfect, but it was a vibrant metropolis on the rise—a place many in Mainland China looked toward with hope and aspiration.

 

Fast-forward to 2026: Hong Kong is now a 'special administrative region' overseen by the Chinese Communist Party. While China’s economic power expands, Hong Kong has diminished into a police state. Since the government crackdowns of recent years, many families have chosen to leave and relocate, seeking shelter from the erasure of individual rights and freedom of speech. I worry about how the boys who remain will grow up in such an uncertain time.

 

Looking at the images in Lessons, I am again moved by the innocence and intimacy of the subjects. No matter how I, as an artist, try to frame and manipulate the context, the boys in these pictures retain an autonomy and a life of their own. While time has changed, for better or worse, everyone must find their own path, and there are still many lessons to be learned.

 

 

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Photographs are taken from the artist's video footage of his visit to his elementary school in Hong Kong.

 

Exhibitions include Gallery TPW (Toronto ON), Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (Ottawa ON), VU (Quebec City QC), Centre A (Vancouver BC) and Art Gallery of University of Waterloo (Waterloo/Kitchener ON).

 

In the collection of National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa