• Issue
  • Nov 01, 2023

Cici Wu: Of Light and Shadow

Portrait of CICI WU. Photo by HG Masters for ArtAsiaPacific.

The pink dolphin of the Pearl River Delta is a lost species, long associated with Hong Kong but now more mythical than real as its numbers have dwindled to the point of extinction. The memory of them, or the imagination of them, as cultural signifiers, returns anew in Cici Wu’s new lantern-sculpture Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (Dolphin) (2023). Constructed with bamboo and rice paper, the various-shaped lanterns she has made in recent years are central to her practice. They become visionary devices, illuminating the darkness and casting undefined shapes, light, and shadows, as if animating the ways our memories can be transformed and resurface in unexpected ways, invoking the interplay between our identity and memory.