Da Xian: The Doomsday, 1997

Da Xian: The Doomsday, 1997

Huang Yong Ping
China, 1954–2019, active France
Da Xian: The Doomsday, 1997
Mixed media installation, gelatin silver print, watercolor on paper
Yuz Foundation Collection

These oversized tea bowls appear at first to bear the motifs of historical Chinese porcelains; however, these designs are actually drawn from ceramics of the British East India Company, an exploitative trading company—and opium trafficker—that colonized parts of South, East, and Southeast Asia from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Though they emulate traditional Chinese styles, the motifs on the bowls depict the flags of a number of European colonial powers, as well as storehouses that held European and American imports during the British occupation of Hong Kong (1842–1997). Imported Western food items fill the tea bowls, each product marked with an expiration date of July 1, 1997—the very day that sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred back to China.

 

© Huang Yong Ping, photo courtesy of the artist