Michelle Kuen Suet Fung - Artist Talk

“The World of 2084” 

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung

The event will begin with an artist talk focusing on Fung's current projects to present a futuristic fictional geopolitical map of a bizarre future, one impacted by changes in the Anthropocene. With bold imagination, subtle humour, and delicate pathos, she weaves acute observations of the early twenty-first century into an absurd, fantastical landscape populated with plastic-eating humans, flying elephants, and islands floating in the sky, and frequently alludes to literary influences such as Orwell and Swift.  The highlight of the afternoon will be the Canadian Premiere of Plastic, plastic, every where! (23 minutes, 2015-2018), Fung’s first creative endeavour involving moving images. This film is comprised of hundreds of images, each meticulously hand-drawn, cut out and scanned before being compiled digitally. She rejects calling this work animation. Oblivious to animation history and convention, this work is firmly grounded in the tradition of drawing, much like that of William Kentridge.

Synopsis

Plastic plastic, every where! portrays a dystopian future where a frenzy of human plastic consumption (e.g., life saver donuts, telephone hotdogs) leads us past the point of no return. This global craze originates from the 2084 annual meeting of the Great Five Industrial Nations. At this meeting, the representative from the imaginary country of Contradictoria (in the form of a pig) proposes that if animals can learn to eat plastic, why can’t children? Plastic becomes an instant hit.

Everyone wants a piece of plastic. In fact, everyone is having a piece of plastic! Miss Dodo, an heiress-cum-teacher, meets a hundred-year-old sea turtle (possibly the last one on earth) on her saga to seek a world with no plastic.

Film trailer: https://vimeo.com/272132688

Bio

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung is a visual artist and art educator whose ambitious ongoing oeuvre revolves around a grand narrative of a dystopian world set in the year 2084. She has exhibited internationally and has participated in prestigious artist residencies including Banff Centre, Canada;Island Institute, Alaska; and Art Omi, New York (recipient of the Cecily Brown Fellowship). Her works have received many awards including 50 Best Books for Secondary Students, Hong Kong Professional Teacher's Union (2018), Young Writer's Debut Competition, Hong Kong (2017), the Grotto Award, Hong Kong Baptist University (2015) and Award of Excellence, Fourth Greater China Illustration Awards (2012 and 2016.)