Almighty Surrender is a joint effort by domestic helper Mengyu and artist Jing Y. The installation is a critical comment on the hyperbolic claims made in ads published by domectic-helper-providing agencies. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

A monumental portrait of a woman with a mic clipped to her face greets the viewer at the entrance to The Ordinary Matters exhibition. Titled The Interpreter (2016), the image raises more questions than it answers. The woman’s accoutrements — a sequined jacket and headscarf — suggest that she could be an ethnic minority, but it’s difficult to deduce anything more specific. Similarly, one cannot be sure if she is asleep or simply looking down. To add to the confusion, the piece is displayed horizontally, as opposed to the standard vertical format for portraits.

Jing Y., who painted the piece, says “the unconventional display is meant to interrupt the conventional habit of viewing portraits”. “It creates the impression of a reclining figure,” she says, calling attention to the gap between perception and reality of the marginalized communities.

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The Ordinary Matters examines the impact of programs designed to help marginalized people reclaim and exercise agency. Hosted by the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries (DACI) at Lingnan University, the exhibition is based on a research project meant to test the efficacy of experimental models of socially engaged art developed by the department in collaboration with non-governmental workers and educators. The works on display include drawings, physical and digital installations and videos created by the artist-educators together with members of the various target groups — domestic helpers including foreign maids, migrant workers and children growing up without parental supervision, both in Hong Kong as well as on the Chinese mainland.  

The participants in Flying Object Alliance’s educational programs for marginalized groups appear colorless in the photos displayed at The Ordinary Matters exhibition. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

“The goal is to experiment with various models of improving digital literacy, enabling critical thinking and self-expression, as well as supporting working-class and migrant children and adults to develop their skills,” says Li Yu-chieh, an assistant professor at DACI and the exhibition’s curator. 

Exhibition highlights include Almighty Surrender (2021-22), an installation that mimics washed sheets hung out to dry under the sun — a nod to the everyday realities of a maid’s life. The piece is a collaboration between a domestic worker named Mengyu, employed on the Chinese mainland, and Jing. The handwritten messages on pieces of white silk, strung up like banners, are a reproduction of advertisement lingo used by domestic-helper-providing agencies. 

Li remarks that the claims made in such ads often do not accurately represent the nature of the job. Mengyu herself had voiced concern that such ads also “distort the image of domestic helpers”.

For the artwork, Mengyu copied the promises made in the ads using a pencil. Li believes the piece “preserves traces of her personality” as a result, while also coming across as a living, tactile thing. Jing traced Mengyu’s writings onto the white silk banners. 

“Hence the visual effect might be a bit unfinished or amateurish, but it is very valuable personal expressions,” Li says. “The piece  might come across as ordinary, but reveals Mengyu’s personality and experiences, while revealing different aspects of domestic work.” 

Jing Y. chose an unconventional display format for her portrait of an ethnic minority woman. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The program organizers seem extremely protective of the marginalized groups involved in the project. The locations where the fieldwork was conducted are referred to by a single letter or not at all. The domestic worker-artists are identified by a first name or just their initials. The children featured in the videos remain unnamed. In a display on the activities involving migrant families and left-behind children conducted by the Flying Object Alliance, an experimental educational collective founded by Jing, the human figures are photoshopped to look like processed negatives, while the environment around them appears in its natural colors. 

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Jing says blotting out the colors from the human figures isn’t necessarily about protecting the identities about the people involved. “That artistic choice was made because I wanted to use different ways of representing the realities that I captured or documented.” She believes the colored and washed-out elements in those pictures, when seen next to each other, “can help raise more awareness of how to read what is going on”.