Hello, this is Momo!

Hello, I am Leung Mee-ping; people call me Momo. I am an artist based in Hong Kong. I will be coming to Nashville in late August for an installation at the Parthenon Museum. This will be my first visit to Nashville. One of my students in HK, who is from Nashville, told me “You’ll love the city.” And I believe him.

When I saw the call for entries for this exhibition, I admired the curatorial concept which intends to explore health issues through an enlightening series of participatory works. In the contemporary art scene, this theme is rare, at least in HK.

I am interested in creating work related to daily life by collecting various objects or images with memories. Examples include used tea bags, mail boxes, air sickness bags, human hair, objects from the neighborhood, etc. Most of my works are community-based in various mediums. Usually, it takes me quite a long time to complete a work as I do extensive background research and collecting. You can find other examples of my work at www.lmp.hk. 

Elsewhere. 1991-2014. Mixed-media. 20,000 Chinese tea bags sewn together by hand.

Memorize the Future as shown at Hair Dialogue, Hong Kong Museum of Arts, 2006.

Daily. 2009. 2,000 glass bricks filled with objects collected from local residents. Prince Boulevard, Chiayi, Taiwan.

Expected Departure. 2007-2012. Installation of light boxes of X-rayed travel sickness bags.

The project I am creating for the Parthenon Museum, Chronicle, is an installation work and I need assistance from the Nashville community to collect a few hundred shortcut, life guide books, such as:

 

 

All the guidebooks collected will be displayed on a shelf in the exhibition gallery, two local senior citizens will sit on either end of shelf; visitors will be able to chat with them about their lives and experiences while looking through the shortcut guidebooks. This work aims to explore the dialectics between speed and desire.

I would like locals to donate guidebooks to me via the Parthenon Museum. Please contact curator Susan Shockley susan.shockly@nashville.gov or Parthenon summer intern Blake Schreiner baschr04@louisville.edu with your book donations.

If any local senior citizens are interested in participating in the project (sitting in the Parthenon gallery and sharing their stories and experiences with visitors) please contact me: meepingleun@yahoo.com.hk.

As I work on this project all the way from HK I will be posting the latest news here on the FLEX IT! blog. Thanks for reading. Momo.

Hello, Nashville. Nice to Meet you

Hello, Nashville! I’m Susan O’Malley, an artist based in Berkeley, California. Thank you (actually, “thanks ya’ll”) for being so nice to me during my residency at the Parthenon Museum for the FLEX IT! My Body My Temple exhibition. I’ve loved visiting your city.

Inspirational Signs (2012), billboard installation, Torun, Poland

I create work to connect with others. I’ve given pep talks in parking lots, asked for advice from strangers, distributed flyers in neighborhood mailboxes, and installed inspirational signs in public spaces.  All this in the name of art.

Mantras For the Urban Dweller, 2013, Installation at Muni Station, San Francisco, CA

For interactive and collaborative projects like the Pep Talk Squad (2005-ongoing), the conversation with others is the artwork. Left to right: Christina Amini and Susan O'Malley

I am interested in shifting familiar exchanges into experiences that allow for a space of possibility. I create projects in order to feel connected to my self and others, and hopefully, if something is going right, the work will provide insight as we grapple with the complexity of our internal and external worlds.

For Community Advice (2013), the back and forth with others served as the material to create the work. I asked people: What advice would you give your 8-year-old self? What advice would you give your 80-year-old self? I used the responses to create a series of letterpress posters that were hung in the community. 

For the Parthenon, I’m creating a series of signs that will be installed in Centennial Park around the perimeter of the Parthenon. My hope is the signs will invite you to engage with the building in a new way, or maybe even reframe how you already see the Parthenon (more soon on this project in a future post). Visit here again and I’ll post about my project and process. For now, thanks for reading this far. Your friend, Susan.