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.
For Cici Wu, many of the questions she raises in her practice tackle issues of belonging and displacement, and this sense of constantreverberates throughout her diverse body of work, ranging from paper-based sculptures, videos, ink drawings, and mixed-media collages. Having moved from her hometown of Beijing to Hong Kong at 13 and now residing in New York, Wu critically examines the discourses surrounding diaspora and migration. Resisting conventional and predictable interpretations of identity, her work transcends particular geographical regions and nationalities and intertwines different temporal coordinates by alluding to poetic storytelling, micro-local histories, symbolism, and anachronic sensibility.
