kathy feng on “sometimes i dream of things that will never be (a love letter),” “a certain romance” by supercharged

sometimes i dream of things that will never be (a love letter), 2021, 3 lightboxes (wood, plexiglass, vellum, LED light strip) 16 x 20 inches each
a certain romance, 2021, text, video, 3 mins

kathy feng is an immigrant and a child of immigrants, who grew up between cultures in a constant process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Through this precarious framework, she became invested in the idea of holding onto memory, whether it be cultural, collective or personal; past, present or future. Nostalgia and memory are central themes in feng’s work that are expressed through text, images, and objects. feng was born in Guangzhou, China, and is a guest living and working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

sometimes i dream of things that will never be (a love letter) uses layered and material confusion to obstruct vision, exploring imagined intimacy, displaced physicality, and hauntings through a lens of the pseudo-domestic. Glowing text—that one may call a love letter at face value—interrupts images from 1970's furniture advertisements, evoking a spectral quality. The implied nostalgia from such images raises questions of sincerity: what about these commercially constructed environments makes us yearn for the familiarity of the past? The absence of a present that never was and presence unattainable becomes a desire, yearning.

a certain romance further explores these questions of yearning and desire by constructing a relationship between the viewer and text (another love letter, of sorts). The slow progression of the text, reminiscent of old school karaoke machines, hinders the comprehension of meaning. Instead, intimacy is formed with individual characters, one after another.