page_title: Ivy Ma
section_title: 2003 to 2009: On-site works and overseas residencies
hierarchical_section_title: Ivy Ma / Selected works and exhibitions / 2003 to 2009: On-site works and overseas residencies
caption_attribution_description: English: Photos and On-site works made at Helsinki
context_page_description: Ivy Ma is a Hong Kong visual artist specializing in mixed media works. Her works were featured in the Hong Kong Art Biennial in 2005 and the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards in 2012. She was the winner of the Young Artist Award category of the 2012 Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards. She was one of the fifteen artists included in the online Artshare exhibition entitled Resistance dedicated to Hong Kong artists, curated by art writer Caroline Ha Thuc. Recipients of the FCO Chevening University of Leeds Scholarship from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Lee Hysan Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council, she participated in various artist-in-residence programs and international artist workshops in Bangladesh, Finland, Åland, and the USA from 2005 to 2009. Her works are in the collection of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and is part of the Hong Kong Legislative Council Complex Art Acquisition Project commissioned by the Hong Kong Legislative Council Commission.
context_section_description: While Room of Memories (2001) already touches on memory and history of a site, Far Away, So Close (2003) installed at the Kadoorie Farm Botanic Garden in Hong Kong in the exhibition entitled Dream Garden was one of Ma's earliest site-specific works. She collected trees collapsed during the typhoon. The tree trunks were sawn into columns and mirrors were attached to the cross-section of the trunks. Images of the sky and other trees were reflected at various angles.
  From 2005 to 2009, Ivy Ma participated in a series of artist residencies and workshops in Bangladesh, Europe and the USA. Several on-site works were realized during this period.
  As in Remember How to Play and Remember How to Draw (2002), childhood memories plays an important part in A Fairy Tale (2005), a work made during the residency at the Britto International Artists’ Workshop at the Nikera Kori Center in Bangladesh. The work includes a fabricated scaled-down version of a merry-go-round, and candies in silk handkerchief. As mentioned in the artist's notes, "It is about children’s dreams, runs in the air of the playground then settles down in a room…a solitude.  It is also about a person watching children play in a playground (as in the lyrics of the Rolling Stones song As Tears Go By), from morning to noon...This was indeed a group work and included the owner of the playground…the blacksmith who made the playground ride, his helper and the children I met in the village who gave me inspiration in thinking about the play in one’s childhood." Collaborated with Abdullah Syed (Pakistan), another participant in the workshop, Always land (2005) is an on-site work using net made with plastic thread and falling leaves.
  Perception of Phenomenal Soundlessness (2006) is an on-site work produced outdoors during her residency at the Cable Factory in Helsinki, Finland. Performative acts were carried out while Ma wandered n the frosty landscape. She dragged an empty suitcase with broken wheels to the lakeside, filled it with her own curled up, unclothed body and photographed herself; she gathered tree sticks from grave land and rearranged them on the ice; and she stuffed ice into a man-shaped cloth doll and hanged it on a tree. Images and documentation of the work were presented in the exhibition entitled Stained, the eclipsed pattern at Uma-g Gallery, Hong Kong in 2006.
  The Wayward Cloud (2006) follows a similar methodology.  Originally an on-site work created when Ma lived in Wan Chai on the Hong Kong Island, It is about the view seen looks back at the seer, an idea already explored in Far Away, So Close (2003). In the artist's word, "I loved to look from my window and see many old buildings. Then I wanted to search for the view that looked back at my home, so I went to the opposite building, and asked the owner if I could pay her a little bit for permission to got to the top and see back to my home." A photograph depicting a naked figure holding a cotton wool cloud on a rooftop and another photograph of the rooftop without the figure taken at the scene were included in the exhibition Perhaps, Solitude at the studio of the late Jerry Kwan, teacher of Ivy Ma in Fotan in 2007.
  In Another Land (2008) is an installation piece created during her residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, using pebbles collected from Rodeo Beach nearby and cotton thread from a closed-down factory in Oakland.
caption: Perception of Phenomenal Soundlessness (2006)
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