Tiffany Sia’s exhibition Phantasmatic Screens explores memory in exile through the symbolic dimension of landscape. In The Sojourn (2023), one of two film installations in the show, Sia retraces the steps of director King Hu (1931–97), acclaimed for his ‘wuxia’ martial arts epics. Hu fled mainland China for Hong Kong in 1949 following the Civil War – a pivotal moment in Chinese history during the Cold War period – later relocating to Taiwan. There, he recreated the atmosphere of his original home in cinematic fantasies set in the Taiwanese mountains. Sia reflects on how Hu ‘reconstructed his birthplace, Beijing, which he’d left as a child and could no longer return to, reflecting on an old world that resided in the recesses of memory’.

Discover this exhibition through the eyes of curator Marie-Noëlle Farcy.