Ellen Pau’s Elegy to a Vanishing Hong Kong
Hyperallergic reviews Ellen Pau: She Moves at SculptureCenter, describing it as the first United States survey of Hong Kong video art pioneer Ellen Pau, curated by Freya Chou with exhibition design by technical director Rain Chan. The show spans 15 videos and installations from the late 1980s to the present, using water—ice, mist, tears, and Victoria Harbour imagery—as a metaphor for Hong Kong’s continual transformation. It foregrounds Pau’s 1988 installation She Moves 她去 and notes how the work has been repeatedly migrated across formats (NTSC to PAL, VHS to DVD) and most recently restored with AI, with each iteration changing what is preserved. The exhibition also includes Pau’s ongoing Fl0ra Zero series (2016–ongoing), including Where Have All the Flowers Gone 冇花 冇假 (2026), which incorporates candles from June 4 vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
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This story was covered in Heritage Under Fire, Art Power Plays