If There is a Garden, Where Would I Be?

“If there is a garden, where would I be?” is a visual and spatial art project in which a “garden” is created for viewers to stay, explore and enjoy.

Though gardens relate to the nature, all gardens are indeed artificial. Nature within the garden is a human projection with layers of mediation. This Garden consists of two areas: “In the Shade” and “In the Garden”. Allowing one to be temporarily isolated from daily life, this Garden is on one hand a physical space where one could stroll, stay and spend time in, with tangible artefacts as elements positioned within; and also a mental landscape which connects us with the intangible — the light, the shadow, the air, the trajectory of the moon, the disappearance of things. Composed of multiple materials, this Garden is an oeuvre that blurs the distinction between subject and background. Within this Garden, viewers are free to open up their sensibility to see and to feel, so as to consciously recalibrate the self in this space of otium.

This collaborative project is conceived and constructed by AU Hoi Lam and CHANG Hoi Wood. Their dispositions and aesthetic values are merged into this Garden. AU uses handicraft to express ideas and emotions, embodying the relationship between the individual and the world. CHANG focuses on the exploration of the emotional power of space through the articulation of geometry, and the innermost sentiments evolved and encountered in such experience. In this project, they explore further the themes of being as an individual: retrospection, contemplation, otium, vigilance, soothing and cultivation. Gardens allow viewers to stroll, introspect and reorganise oneself. Gardens connect the individuals to the world. Gardens craft landscapes on earth and in mind.