Humans are part of nature, but urbanisation takes us further away from nature in the current age. Artist Cordelia Tam sought to permeate the natural world to our urban space with a series of multi-media works.

Responding to the unique features of the building, the artist combined different media, including handmade paper, projection, sound, machinery, animation and light, to convey the flow of nature, the subtleties of movement and the duration of time. The works reminded us of visual elements in nature, which were brought indoors to interact with the architecture to create an illusionary space with poetic imagery. The artist used everyday office waste paper as her primary material. Paper originates from trees in the natural world. They are converted to pulp, from which handmade paper was produced and transformed into window sceneries and falling leaves. The choice and application of the materials spoke to the subtle relationship between our life and nature.

In this city full of skyscrapers, our few glances of nature are perhaps limited to looking up at the sky and clouds between the buildings, listening to birds tweeting amid the noise of vehicles and construction works, or seeing tree shadows and fallen leaves when walking in the street. Tam's works brought some of this natural scenery indoors, and from the illusions, the audience might temporarily forget about the distance between the city and nature.

When passers-by stopped or slowed down to observe these artificial sceneries, the sensory experience might prompt them to relax, and in the peace of the moment, contemplated our complex relationship with nature, which is so close, yet so far away. From this perception of nature, they might reflect on the actual environment we live in today.

Artist: Cordelia Tam

Date: 11.5 – 7.11.2022

Venue: 1-5/F, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre

medialogue aims to spark a dialogue between art and technology, to explore the potential and capability for applying technology in the creation of art and to consider and extend the boundaries of contemporary art practices. Joined hands with different artists, it is hoped to stimulate a discussion about those practices by asking questions – about ideologies in media and art in a constantly changing sociocultural environment, about how media relate to contemporary art practices and how they cultivate aesthetic values and manifest cultural content, about the possibilities and capacity of media art, and about what kind of impact media will have on art practices today and in the future.