Focusing upon market gardens, gardeners, and grocers, Offering reflects Cindy Huang’s research into the Tauiwi Chinese New Zealand community of Te Matau-a-Māui Hawkes Bay, past and present. Faced with a lack of recorded histories, the artist instead relied upon oral accounts from across community, in order to piece together a picture of their lives, contributions, and labours.
Using fruit sourced from Onekawa Fruit Shop—a local Chinese New Zealand family business—Huang's sculptural installation comprises a collection of bronze casts, of citrus peel and apple cores, that she has purposed as incense holders; these are accompanied by incense, in sandalwood and dried fruit, that the artist has also herself made.
The work evokes ancestor shrines, and their associated Chinese traditions of filial piety: the offerings of fresh fruit and burning of incense; for which are considered to create a sanctified and cleansed space, which bridges the past with the present, and allow one to commune with their ancestors and memories. And although the artist doesn’t consider her work to be a shrine in itself, she nevertheless sees it as fulfilling a similar act of tribute.
Huang considers the work as something akin to a tableau vivant, a living still life, which gestures towards certain specific accounts of hardship and distress that were recounted to her. These are stories whose details are intended to remain private, hidden from view; guarded by the communities for which they concern.
The exhibition runs from 19 October 2024 until 1 February 2025.
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