Yarli Allison - Eye Stand

Eye Stand
Steel stand and nails pinned on porcelain figures
Stand 168 x 22 cm with various sizes spinnable bars on the top
Figures 2.5 (H) x 1.5 (W) x 0.5 (D) cm each approximately
2013

Eye Stand is an interactive work that investigates my survival experience in the densely populated Hong Kong, where people are conditioned to gaze at each other in this metropolis. When I was a child, I migrated from Canada to Hong Kong with my parents. Despite the fact that my ethnic roots are in Hong Kong, I felt different from the locals from the start. It was a struggle growing up in an environment where you are forced to erase who you were before in order to assimilate. Even after a decade when I was forced to give up my Canadian English to adapt Cantonese flawlessly, strangers still question whether I was from elsewhere because of the "feeling" that I present as someone who does not conform to traditional norms or values.

Viewers are invited to spin the top bars and aim for whatever that wanted to gaze at (e.g. tiny figures pinned on the walls). Who is the observer in front of the eye stand, and who is behind your target window at this time?

..... 2019/20