JOYCE HO

The Chinese title of Joyce Ho’s exhibition, 事故 (literally “incident”), is a witty wordplay that invites interpretations. The myriad of possibilities, just to state out the obvious three, includes the double meaning of the words, homophony of the diction and the reading direction. Its English title NO ON can be read as two separate words NO and ON, or as one word NOON. In the forming of the word and its nuance in its kerning and syllable, the title of the exhibition lingers between the distance created by a spacebar and therefore creating the scope of a discrepancy. This scope becomes the first space Ho came across in her practice and the prelude and the starting point of the exhibition represented by a line. This way of manipulating the multiple meanings of symbols might seem straightforward at first. However, in contemporary society when symbols and their interpretations are disordered, this simple method revealed through the exhibition and the space attracts and draws viewers into perceiving their most intimate everyday stories.

Before entering the exhibition space, there is a large digital billboard acting as a service guide for the exhibition. This combination of installation and performance imagery is a necessary starting point of the exhibition. After perusing the preface, we enter the exhibition space where lights flicker and flash. The flickering of lights interferes with the audience’s vision and throwing them off balance, offering an opportunity that they might regain and acquire a new sense of the space. The colossus that comes into view after the constant sense of wavering evokes a distant memory where we once as children nestled in a cradle; at the same time, it is also a fence erected as a barricade. For safety, viewers would speed up in order to pass through the dangerous rocking crib. In tandem, a piece of cloth floats through the air, drifting and falling slowly towards the table before floating again. Staring in awe, viewers are exposed to these repeated movements, enjoying this semi-automatic exhibition. The aforementioned events are merely descriptions of the exhibition. One might expect “incidents” to happen, yet it leaves to the viewers to draw the line to the other end of the narrative so as to let “stories” unravel and to own this corner of dots and lines.