JOYCE HO

The act of counting serves as a recurring motif in this exhibition. Varying rhythms and beats occur as a response to different individuals within the space during the process of counting. In these beats and rhythms resides an equilibrium born out of the same resonant frequency, easily at the mercy of dissonance. Counting, in a way, embodies the artist’s perpetual search for harmony.

Divided into two, the exhibition consists of a white box and a black box. The evenly-lit white box evokes the artist’s home surroundings: neat and organised, dictated by a sense of order and rhythm. The entire space, drenched in fresh white light, morphs into the dream or subconscious of a stranger, permeated with the nuanced everyday observations of the artist. As if entering a clean, uncluttered space, the viewer takes a peek through the artist’s eyes at these meticulous objects. The state of motion is manifested through the sounds, rhythms, beats, or blurred layers conceived by the movement of objects or superimposition of images. Whether it is an unseen waft of wind or someone’s deliberate fiddling that reveals the light percolating through the roller shades, or images layered upon one another to conjure the trajectory of time, these movements remind the viewer of the recurring visual cue throughout the artist’s oeuvre: imagery perched at the shifting transition between blurred and clear.

Installed in the black box, the work Vera X Diary awaits the viewer. As if entering the backstage, the viewer, enfolded in darkness, loses their sense of sight, led only by their sense of hearing and the sound of their anxious beating heart. Their eyes growing accustomed to the dark, the viewer follows the sounds and beats of the work, and comes before the eight simultaneous, though non-synchronic, screens. These screens allow for two ways of seeing. When the viewer focuses on a single screen, they see the relationship between the body of an individual and the space that it inhabits; whereas, when the viewer watches all eight screens simultaneously, they see rhythms harmonise across different spaces on the screens, eliciting a state of unison. Traversing the exhibition space, the viewer becomes part of the ensemble orchestrated on and off the screens through the physical movement of the body.

In this work, the actor Vera manoeuvers her body to deftly store herself or vigorously intervenes in vacant spaces, obliterating distinctions between them. With steady rhythm and measured movement, the actor erases the dissimilarities in materiality, décor, and identity among the spaces. At a certain moment, all the rhythms synchronise, discrepancies eliminated, beats aligned. The actor seems to be playing a game of self-counting, where her body occupies the space amid the rise and fall of the beats. The viewer, too, takes on the role of a player within the game.

As each beat falls, the viewer discerns the space where their body dwells, moving in rectifying synchrony with the rhythm, each step closer to the path to harmony.