Migration, Homecoming and Autoethnography: Shorts + in conversation

Date: Sat 28 Mar 2026 14:30 - 17:00

Venue: BLOC cinema, Arts One Building, Queen Mary University, 1 Westfield Way, London E1 4PD

The event presents an artist film programme exploring the lived experience of coming to the ancestral home in the Chinese diaspora. In the films, the three artists trace their families’ migratory trajectories – originally from China to Indonesia, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Trinidad, Canada, Singapore and the UK. Through ‘coming home’, the artists negotiate their diasporic Chinese origins, identities and varied personal and familial stories. The films look into the subjectivity of diasporic experience and the measure of distance to the supposed homeland.

Followed by an in conversation with artist Erika Tan, moderated by Clare Chun-yu Liu

Film Programme:

May You Live in Interesting Times (Fiona Tan, 1997, 60 mins)

Fiona Tan was born in Indonesia from an Indonesian-Chinese father and an Australian mother, and as such May You Live in Interesting Times is Tan’s most autobiographical work to date. It traces the history of the Tan family. In a documentary style, the work critically analyzes the construction of (her own) identity, but also investigates the identity of the Overseas Chinese and delves into their diaspora. Through various testimonies relating some of the history and the present day situation of the family and its individuals, a journey is made which leads from The Netherlands to Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and China, where the original ‘Tan-village’ is found. Although every inhabitant of this place carries the Tan name, the artist herself feels that she will never be able to feel at home there. May You Live in Interesting Times, displays how personal and political history, migratory movements and cultural background modifies the perception of identity. Although the myths of an original culture may persist, it inevitably gets transformed and even abandoned across time.

The Way to My Father's Village (Richard Fung, 1988, 38 mins)

Richard was born and grew up in Trinidad, on the other side of the world from China. In the fall of 1986 he finally went to his father's village in southern Guangdong. This experimental documentary examines the way that children of immigrants relate to the land of their parents. It is about the construction of history and memory, the experience of colonialism, and about Westerners looking at China. It is the first tape of a two-part series.

Journeys of Remembrance ( Erika Tan, 2008, 18 mins)

JOURNEYS OF REMEMBRANCE uses photographs that Erika has taken in 1993 during a trip made by the her father, brother and herself to their ancestral village in Fujian Province, China. With the passing of time the authorship of these images has become obscured and their status as aide-memoir exposed for the subjectivity inherent in looking at, reading, and giving voice to the image. The image becomes yet another source of subjective interpretation and in this work is voiced through the narratives of 3 speakers, who are in fact performing the acts of reading and (re)interpreting- literally. The voice-overs have been produced from an interview between the 3 individuals who took the original journey, the interview then transcribed and read back with simultaneous translation into Hokkien, Spanish, Portuguese, English and Mandarin- or their approximate and often faltering equivalents.

About the Artists:

Fiona Tan is a visual artist and filmmaker. She is best known for her skilfully crafted video and film installations, in which explorations of memory, identity and the role of visual images are key. Her installations and photographic works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in international venues. She has written and directed to date three feature length films. Recent solo exhibitions took place at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, Museum Ludwig Cologne, Museum für Modern Kunst, Frankfurt, Mudam, Luxembourg, Nasjonalmuseet Oslo, The BALTIC, Gateshead, UK, MAXXI, Rome and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With her solo presentation Disorient, Tan represented The Netherlands at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Her work has been shown at various international group shows including in the São Paulo Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, Documenta IX, Istanbul Biennale. Her work is represented in numerous international public and private collections including the Tate Modern, London, the Guggenheim Museum New York, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Neue National Galerie, Berlin and the MCA, Chicago.

Richard Fung is an artist and writer born in Trinidad and based in Toronto.

His work comprises challenging videos on subjects ranging from the role of the Asian male in gay pornography to colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, AIDS, justice in Israel/Palestine, and his own family history. His single-channel and installation works, which include Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians (1984) and its redux Re:Orientations (2016), My Mother’s Place (1990), Sea in the Blood (2000), Jehad in Motion (2007), Dal Puri Diaspora (2012) and Nang by Nang (2018), have been widely screened and collected internationally, and have been broadcast in Canada, the United States, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Richard’s essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and he is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics (2002), later updated and translated into French. He was a Rockefeller Fellow at New York University and has received the Bell Canada Award for outstanding achievement in video art, the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art, the Kessler Award from CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York for a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBTQ Studies and the Bonham Centre Award from Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto for distinguished contribution to the public understanding of sexual diversity in Canada.

Richard is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University.

richardfung.ca

Erika Tan's work has evolved from an interest in received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movements of ideas, people and things. Her work arises out of processes of research and responses to the unravelling of facts, fictions, and encounters related to events, locations, audiences and specifics that may already exist. Her work has been exhibited internationally including Tate Modern (London 2024), Times Museum (Guangdong, China 2020); The World Trade Centre (New York 2019); The Diaspora Pavilion (Venice 2017); Busan Biennale (Korea 2014); The Samsung Art Plus Prize (BFI London, 2011); There Is No Road (LABoral, Spain 2010); Thermocline of Art (ZKM, Germany 2007); Around The World in Eighty Days (South London Gallery / ICA 2007); The Singapore Biennale (2006); Cities on the Move (Hayward Gallery, London). Erika’s work has been collected by NUS Museum Singapore, British Council, Arts Council England, Kadist Foundation. Erika is currently a Reader of Contemporary Art Practice and MA Fine Art Course Leader at Central Saint Martins School of Art, University of the Arts, London.

About the Curator

Clare Chun-yu Liu is an artist and curator. Informed by her family’s Taiwanese, Chinese and Indonesian background, Clare’s practice centers on diaspora and identity through exploring lived experience and oral history. Her films have been showed at Raven Row, ICA, New Art Exchange, EXiS, Image Forum Festival, Nida Art Colony and Kasseler Dokfest.

www.clarechunyuliu.com

@clarechunyuliu

Image credit: May You Live in Interesting Times, Fiona Tan ; Journeys of Remembrance, Erika Tan

The event is part of Whose Homeland 25-26 presented by Sine Screen, a film season that explores migration, displacement and marginalised lives in East & Southeast Asia and the diaspora. The programme will be running until March 2026, with the support of the BFI, awarding National Lottery funding. Find Out More.

Sine Screen is a London-based screening collective dedicated to showcasing independent cinema and moving-image works from across East and Southeast Asia. It aims to create space for critical dialogue around dominant representations of ESEA cultures and histories through diverse programming.

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