Cici Wu
Directing
Biography
Cici Wu (b.1989) lives and works in New York and Hong Kong. She creates complex, sensory and dreamlike investigations into our cultural and material environment using drawing, video, sculpture, writing and installation. Combining historical research and material experimentation with an acute sensitivity to sociopolitical structures, Wu’s works aim to explore and interrupt dominant narratives on a multitude of subjects, including memory, cinematic history, nationalism, cultural belonging and identity, and interpersonal relationships between humans and non-humans. She received her BA from the City University of Hong Kong, and MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has had solo exhibitions at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (2023, 2019); 47 Canal, New York (2021, 2018); a collaborative exhibition at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Norway in 2023; and has participated in group exhibitions at the Drawing Center, New York (2023, 2020), CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2022), Para Site Hong Kong (2021, 2018), among others. She has participated in the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021) and the Yokohama Triennial 2020 Episōdo 02 (2020). (Empty Gallery)
Known For
The Unfinished Return of Yu Man-hon focuses on Cici Wu's cultural imaginary and extensive research into the unaccountable disappearance of Yu Man-hon, a mentally disabled and an autistic boy who crossed the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border into the mainland and disappeared on August 24, 2000.
Unfinished Return of Yu Man-hon
A film produced in collaboration with Beijing-based collaborator Yuan Yuan which interweaves 16mm film and DV video with textual intertitles and fragments of voice-over narration. Merging aspects of visionary cinema, landscape film and home movie, the film combines footage shot in Manhattan Chinatown, Hong Kong, and Beijing into an intimate reflection on the act of physical and spiritual passage between a series of pressurised and rapidly shifting temporalities governed by different myths of order.