Four Quadrants of the Sky 四大神獸: Eelyn Lee & Collaborators
15 September - 14 October
Launch event: Thu 14 Sep, 6 - 8pm
Free & open to all
Four Quadrants of the Sky 四大神獸 is the completion of the second cycle of artist and filmmaker Eelyn Lee’s ambitious Performing Identities project that explores what it means to be East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) in the UK today. The works-in-progress of this project was also presented at Bloc Projects as Hong Kong Future Diasporas in October 2022.
Referring to the ‘four images’ (四象)—the custodians of each cardinal direction (North, South, East and West) in Chinese celestial thinking—the second cycle has been a year-long investigation on personal and cultural experiences through processes of divination and cosmologies. Of mixed Hong Kong and English heritage, Eelyn spent her formative years in and around her family’s Chinese restaurants in the Midlands. Those environments clearly buoy this cycle’s work on the collaborative articulation of ‘embodied knowledges’. Reaching beyond conscious memories or narratives and tapping into movement and sensory realms, what else are we storing in our bodies? What do they tell us about homeland, selfhood and legacies of unbelonging? The artist has been co-creating four new mythical characters alongside a core group of UK-based Hong Kongers that newly constellate diasporic identity and becoming. The results of this work will be presented in an immersive installation comprising scenes of the characters, a soundscape and a display of the four costumes.
Four Quadrants of the Sky 四大神獸 collaborators include:
Performers: Clara Cheung, Angela YT Chan, Tala Lee Turton, Eelyn Lee
Choreographer: Jan-Ming Lee
Costume & Set Designer: Christine Ting-Huan 挺歡 Urquhart
Costume Assistant: Thu Truong
Cinematographer: Jim Wraith
Focus Puller: Ai Narapol
Gaffer: Anh Do
Sound Design: Jane Lo
Colourist: Sarina McCavana
Costume & Set Assistant: Shania Simpson
Make-Up: Kinga Dwornik
Curated by Sunshine Wong
Production still: Juan de Leon-Padmore
Exhibition documentation: Jules Lister
Public Programmes
If you would like to find out more about the stories and contexts behind Four Quadrants of the Sky, join us for the following events! Click on the link to find out more and to book:
a roundtable event called ‘Supernatural beings: collective mythmaking & martial arts films’ with martial arts scholar Dr Wayne Wong.
Four Quadrants of the Sky builds on last year’s Hong Kong Future Diaspora, collaborators of which also included Anna Chan, Franco Ho, Jonathan Tang, Dr Wayne Wong, Shan Ray Cheung.
Eelyn Lee is an award-winning artist and filmmaker based in Sheffield. She has exhibited at Barbican, Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery as well as internationally in Paris, Berlin, Bogotá and Toronto. Eelyn’s practice combines collective research, devised theatre and filmmaking to create frameworks for ensembles of collaborators to work together. In 2016 she co-founded Social Art Network, an artist-led network, building agency in the field of art and social practice. In 2020 she was commissioned to make Casting Fu Manchu, a film exploring ‘yellow peril’ in response to the rise of COVID related ‘Asian hate’. Eelyn is currently developing her first narrative feature film.