Charcoal Sketches of
Urban Transitional Spaces

Tang uses charcoal, paint and paper together with the inclusion of architectural and furniture elements in her work. She creates “rooms” along the Tunnel to provide an experience of illusion and reality, memory and imagination, private and public space, still life and landscape.

This installation also consists of two poems: A Chinese poem co-written with Taiwanese writer Rikey Cheng, found in the first “room”, and an English poem written by Singapore writer and literary translator Lee Yew Leong, located in the second “room”.

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The Chinese Poem in the first room:

每当风起时，
你总是喜欢和我一起坐在窗边，
看着天上的风筝，
拖着长长的尾巴翱翔。

你说：
希望我们像风筝一样越飞越高，
飞到外面的世界旅行，
可是你却独自飞走了。

我走过一道又一道门，
也走过一圈又一圈的时针，
我推开一扇又一扇窗，
每推开一扇窗，就想起一只风筝。

但我再也听不见你的声音，
只听见胸口的空洞，传来响亮的回声。

有时我会坐在窗边，
想像和你一起看着天上的风筝。

风筝飞得有多高，
胸口的洞就有多深。

陈玲娜 / 郑文琦 (Rikey Cheng) 字

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The English Poem in the second room:

If you must know,
since you've been gone,
none has been the knight in shining armour
I had hoped for.

Even if there was something real
about each, and I had had to run
into the fire each time to salvage it.

(Well, there was one who came close,
except he let go
to save himself.)

I found a lump in my breast the other day.
My first thought was ha!
at least he left me when I was still beautiful.
I was even disappointed
when the doctor told me it was nothing.

Afterwards, back in the waiting room, it suddenly hit me
that I had stopped going to one person for my needs
just as I had stopped going to a family doctor.
Somehow, I had fallen into the habit
of opening up to whoever happened to be on call.

All my life, I have been trying to get People and Place together and
it's been very hard.

Text by Lee Yew Leong