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Screen shot of Video. Black and white image of woman in the Bckground holding her face. Image in foreground on left shows a plant in a room. Image in foreground on right shows hand playing with toy.

3rd Floor, Room 301.

Specially developed for the CAFKA @ The Walper 2019 exhibition, a room in the Walper Hotel is turned into a site of solitude, simulation, and synchronization, delivered through vocals (public and private sounds) and personal footage by Toronto-based collective Call Again (Henry Heng Lu and Winnie Wu). This site-specific installation, We sing, we connect dots, features objects found in the artists' homes (e.g. kitchenware, fabrics, paper notes), as well as two video works, “Anytime you need a(nother) friend!” (2017-2018) and “Symphony” (2017).

"Anytime you need a(nother) friend!" by Henry Heng Lu juxtaposes fragments of videos for several Mandarin pop ballads with dozens of clips of the artist singing English love songs while interacting with everyday objects in his possession. The clips are drawn from an archive of hundreds of short videos made by the artist on his portable devices over a year and a half. The work touches upon notions of longing, displacement, and (un)acceptance, and it positions the narratives rooted in diasporic sensibilities constructed through an interplay of private and popular imagery and sounds within an intercultural context.

"Symphony" by Winnie Wu is a constructed documentation of two choir performances that play with a sense of being disorientated. In the video, the main character Sue Lam was singing in a church choir where she was the only Asian performer, as well as a Cantonese opera group where she was the only Canadian-born Chinese.

Anytime you need a(nother) friend! (2017-18) from Henry Heng Lu on Vimeo.

Henry Heng Lu would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council through its Exhibition Assistance program.

 

Symphony from Winnie Wu on Vimeo.