between rising and ceasing 
of this life
between goodbye and hello
of our friendship

singing a song to the travel star
the celestial of movement is at rest
forgive us that we forgot which sense to use

I’m here to greet a river called Spree 
how old is Spree I asked
and how long are you?

travel star
you know my routes and seconds folded in the dependent arises 
can you forgive my movement
continue to bless a migratory heart
surrounded by light

only till now I came to understand meaning of traveling 
from very old memories of family and home
great grandparents
recurring but why do you appear now?

travel star
you know my memories and their patterns 
what ends in the journey of ‘returning’
even after millions of ceasing
with rising
it’s all recalled


Travel Star Between Ceasing and Arising follows Cici Wu’s recent ruminations on migratory position, travel and its intimations, explored through a recent film and a new sculpture of a small horse—a cosmological symbol of movement.

The exhibition also presents Re:Mothlight, a series of drawings that reinterpret Mothlight (1963), an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage. In her drawings, Wu meticulously transposes Brakhage’s filmstrips onto paper. Using ink washes to render the film’s flickering luminosity as gestural movement, she vertically encodes the forms of moth wings, flower petals, and blades of grass across the paper in flowing gradations of black pigment––translating the rhythmic temporality of the cinematic apparatus and the affective charge brought forth by it into the language of ink painting. Wu shows curiosity to Brakhage‘s message behind the camera-less and the film-less work—creating art despite financial constraints by using dead moths gathered around his home. The work poses a fundamental question about art‘s relationship to external funding. Along- side these drawings, there are old sketches on paper to show moments of the artist’s studio time between Hong Kong and New York from 2021-2024.

At the core of the exhibition is Wu’s short film Belonging and Difference (2023), a long-distance collaborative endeavour between the artist and Beijing-based queer photographer Yuan Yuan. Filmed between New York, Beijing and Hong Kong, the work weaves together 16mm film and DV video, overlaid with text in traditional Mandarin and English, and voice-over narration in Cantonese. Beginning with footage from East Broadway Mall in New York’s Chinatown during the pandemic, the landscape shifts to scenes of Beijing in lockdown with members of the artist’s family at home, to a queer underground party, and a sequence of historically significant sites rendered obscure such as Chang‘An Avenue, Dongdan Park and a memorial site for June Fourth, before ending with footage of Hong Kong’s cross-harbour tunnel in a reference the siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University—a wound that remains open. Belonging and Difference seeks to investigate how notions of “diasporic” and “migratory” are indexed, suggesting the potential of migratory aesthetics (rather than territorial defence) as an experimental means to repair—continuously narrating, expressing, and libera- ting from a position of displacement, whilst the inherent hybridity of our identities flourish.¹

Special introduction to Yuan Yuan, formerly based in Beijing, currently living and studying in the Netherlands. 
With a background in literature and language, writing serves as the foundation of their artistic practice, often evolving with their image practice in parallel. Their works explore the intersection of the collective unconscious and the cosmos, delving into themes of belonging and displacement, with an ongoing focus on minority groups.

Yuan‘s new photo zine 另刂, created in fall 2024 following their departure, will be featured in the exhibition. Serving as a preface to the film Belonging and Difference, the zine weaves together images and texts that evoke deeply embedded memories of Beijing.

Bio:
Reducing filmmaking to its most humble and elemental components, Cici Wu creates drawings, objects, videos, and installations which extend the imaginative and structural premises of cinematic language across a wide range of media. 
Often taking local microhistories or archives as a point of departure, Wu uses the cinematic frame as a means to negotiate and reflect on the ways in which transpersonal narratives of social, cultural and historical belonging structure our experiences of self. 
Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (2023, 2019), 47 Canal, New York (2021, 2018); a collaborative exhibition at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Norway (2023); and has participated in group exhibitions at Outside Art Space, Beijing (2024), the Drawing Center, New York (2023), CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2022), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea (2021), Para Site, Hong Kong (2020, 2018), Loong Mah, New York (2022), Artists Space, New York (2020), among others. She has participated in the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021) and the Asian Art Biennale, Taiwan (2024). Cici Wu was born and raised in Beijing and Hong Kong.

Special thanks:
Jacqueline Kwok, Grace Sanabia, Jasmine Lee, Alysha Lee, Alex Lau, Amanda Lee

¹ Jaime Chu, “Hong Kong Literature’s Growing Pains,” the Baffler, Jan 11, 2023. https://thebaffler.com/latest/hong-kong-literatures-growing-pains-chu