The Caress and the Sting

This body of work is a photographic reading of Hong Kong — an aim at making sense of concurrently familiar and foreign spaces, while uncovering what it might mean to be at home in the world, there. From foreign domestic workers gathered in the financial district on their one day off to commonplace sights at the race track and wet market, there is staggering joy and melancholy in looking and trying to acquaint one’s self with a new environment.

The gaze of flânerie, Tsung-yi Huang writes, “can be compassionate, invested and inquiring, and at the same time, detached, alienated and passive.” Drifting through Hong Kong for the first time as a foreigner—without a firm grasp of the language but looking like many in the crowd—this work is an embodiment of the misgivings of that travel experience.