Home videos from the artist’s early years in the UK are interwoven with the Cantonese opera, ‘Romance of the Phoenix Chamber’ (1962) - a love story in which a princess loses her memory as she is taken away from her homeland.

For one year, Wingshan Smith worked as a princess for childrens’ parties under her English middle name, Eloise. The second video is a recording of a performance inspired by panto tropes of forgetfulness in a party entertainer’s script. The character, Princess Eloise soon deteriorates into a real life lament on memory, identity, and loss.

The piece reflects upon diaspora fears but also stood in solidarity with the 2019-2020 democracy protests in Hong Kong, a place with a long history of hybridity and transience.

Ga Yau.