interview_materiality

物提理奧: It was pretty quiet in the street and no one was there but me and my partner we saw a bunch of house construction leftover on a cart. “Hey let’s go there and see what’s that” We stood near the Frank Mohr Building looking at it and the question formed itself: what am I gonna take. The light is dim, after spending some time standing there, I picked a block of plaster, and I saw it has blue droplets and markings on its surface, it was like crying. I was out of my head but I knew I got something I wanted.

物提理奧: Later in the ceramic workshop, I asked if I could sculpt it. The technician looked at the “plaster” and doubted if it is plaster. He said “It might be a kind of stone that is very toxic which is abandoned to use and it has to be made outside. What are you going to make?” I told him I was going to make a distorted eyeball, cutting the plaster into half and make a pair of ball shape. He asked me “Can’t you make a mold and cast out of other plaster?” I told him but it is in the construction site that it is "this", the thing right in front me that it has to be it.

Peotic: 密提里奧knew she was seeing the inside of the eyeball, the droplets if crying is from the inside of the eyeball. What she is thinking is the distorted form of an eyeball, she would introduce to other people. It is happening when someone cries a lot before sleeping, the next morning the eyes became so weird, one big one small. What she was doing is to turn it into something that it is supposed to look like.

Art historian: What 物提理奧 was driving at was the meaning of an object, perception of homeless, seeing her home changed so fast that she couldn’t recognize it was her home anymore, she was no different from a person who is regarded as homeless and it has nothing to deal with a shelter. To 物提理奧, she was in the Netherlands, a place which has a colonial background but it seems not related to us. It is about you and me but also not about you and me. She is like the plaster but just a plaster was not enough.

Jessie：物提理奧’s interest to see the plaster transformed into an eyeball to visit the old house, suggests the act of seeing, witnessing, and displacing itself in a place the eyeball is no longer living there, to admit the home is not gonna go back to the one the eyeball could recognize. She could be cruel and brutal.

Eyeball (silence): I became like a person, looking at objects that are so close to me makes us performative. What is interacting with me, was also a photo frame is placed opposite to the eyeball which looks like two people involving in an unhappy conversation, not wanting to see each others’ faces. Attached to the frame was a cloth written a statement "I did not ask you to come by, why did you" and critics asked, “If you are really trusting the ability of yourself, why use language, let’s throw text and statement away!”

Jessie: I told them the question is exactly as I want it to be. At the time I left Hong Kong and discovered the two little coins followed me secretly or I made them followed me accidentally. When it appeared as words, why should I hide it or transform it? It is other 物提理奧, and in such a case, I don’t see any privilege of words, 物提理奧 is language. The coins were asked this question and now they asked the eyeball who visited the old house back that the curiosity was transformed to the arrogance that they don’t even know they are pushing the eyeball to a lonesome situation.

物提理奧: I was in the Netherlands, and I spent a lot of time in front of recycling bins, trash can, and free stuff shelves. It was fascinating to wander in the second-hand shop that I picked up texture I like, everything I don’t know what to do with it but just let alone them they moved me to somewhere.

Poetic: The materials always trying to do something 物提理奧 she thought she could do that they were telling her that you couldn’t do. She was out there by herself.

Jessie：物提理奧 was in her element when overcoming difficult questions and judgment. She always saw herself as a form even as a text. She was born in Hong Kong and later on, she came to the Netherlands to study art. It was at a time she was in a society full of political and social turmoil and things in her eyes turn into a metaphor of human condition in such a society.

物提理奧: Questions first as an accuse and then as an understanding of the text itself. There was a time I was asked if the text I was showing in the curtain, “the moon is shining on the sea, we are heading to it, why is it not shining on us” as romanticizing as there are a lot of people getting hurt in protest. It is not the curtain that cannot express itself that I create a text, but it is another way around that I transformed the text into a form, which is wrinkling through sewing it on a cloth, at least it is not pleasant, neither romantic in the form itself.

Art historian：物提理奧 never thought such a question would strike her for months, brought her into the days back in Hong Kong, the things she witnessed but out of security and cultural practice that she would not tell others what others assumed she would have told, she blames of herself failing to explain with words, to clarify, to justify her statement.

Jessie: Why not the reality of a person situated that make her ask such a question which told her the cruelty of reality that the future is never gonna cast under such a moonlight but always rowing in a dark sea. I thought the form and texture already explain the condition of the question but it was her who did not tell others about my background that I was put under the judgment.

Poetic：物提理奧 believed it is far more dangerous than people put the existence of artists so front that ignores the fact that artists are indeed an agent and we could have missed out the texture of materials.

::::::::: : When 物提理奧 was about to finish the surface, she looked into me and asked what would it be like if the eyeball is also looking at it. It was the blue droplets on the eyeball that I witnessed and remembered as part of my memory. She made me a reminder for people to notice the crying of the eyeball and a witness to it.

物提理奧: Everything in the room come as a pair and cut as a pair. I began to see objects come together as a collective and help with each other to complete the narration, not her, neither the text.