Expected Departure
Leung Mee Ping
梁美萍
Production date
2004-2016
Object Detail
Media
x-rays on light boxes
Measurements
100 pieces, dimensions variable
Notes
Expected Departure is a long-term project, brought to completion only when it entered the White Rabbit collection. The materials Leung Mee Ping has collected are travel sickness bags from trains, planes and ships. These have been X-rayed, and the X-rays are presented on lightboxes, becoming a grid of ethereal glowing ghostly shapes. Leung points out that vomit bags are repositories for sickness, and X-rays reveal illnesses that may be hidden. She asks the question: can all sickness be seen? Feeling adrift between home and away, travelling back and forth, Leung Mee Ping was thinking about the notion of belonging, and about the ache of longing for the known felt by immigrants, a homesickness that is sometimes experienced as a physical ailment even though it may not be visible to others. Vomit bags, even X-rayed and unused, are a signifier of what they are designed to contain. Empty, transparent, they represented the artist’s own sense of emptiness, a hollowness borne of a nomadic existence across cultures.
Accession number
2016.140