wood, laminate, bamboo, pleather, melamine, live theatrical production (30”00)
4 meters x 3 meters x 3.5 meters

Former Married Police Quarters, Central, Hong Kong S.A.R. (2010)

Written in collaboration with cultural anthropologist, Castagna Ventura, “Umbrellahead, I Will Find You” is the culmination of 3-months of immersive research into an area of urban redevelopment on Western Hong Kong Island. Aiming to give physical shape to the untold, emotive histories traced in the Western district, interviews with local small business-owners and craftsmen were collected and used as source material to script a 30-minute theatrical production.


“Umbrellahead, I Will Find You” focuses on the apocryphal Lei Mei, a silent film starlet whose infatuation with the Western World led to her disfigurement via botched plastic surgery and eventual commitment to an asylum. This character, introduced by an unidentified source in a mid-century periodical, was so omnipresent that the fiction of her life pervaded the memories and recollections of interviewees. The play’s narrative takes these mis-recollections and anecdotes roughly as its framework, using it as an inroad to the conscious and unconscious narratives/historical desires of the region. With choreography by Lorea Solabarietta and costume design by Jim Chan.