Dinu Li - A Phantom's Vibe

Loosely inspired by the sleeve notes for the first Roxy Music album, William Garvin travels beyond academic art criticism, to comment on a challenging show by Dinu Li.

Photo by Jules Lister

within dimly-lit space an evocation of night markets in hong kong: the presence of pallet dollies, crates, tarpaulin emphasising the makeshift/transitory...

(where are we...?) 

sculptural assemblages punctuate a personal narrative ghosting through post-colonial aftershocks - from hong kong to blues parties in manchester's hulme/moss side. accumulations/pilings of random artefacts: abandoned wing mirrors; pom-poms;  twisted hair extensions; small model budgerigars (roll up, roll up) ~ jarring juxtapositions, the sensory/information overload of a far eastern market - or is it? 

("to all reggae lovers around the world...) 

 where are we? where was i? over the speakers a story told in music/sound system vibrations. skanking hawker intersperses extracts of chinese tribal mountain song in/amongst floating dub echoes/clatter (producers: sleepy ignota/rocksteady ray/keefe west, in collaboration with the artist) ~ also within the mix always together (a chinese love song) stephen cheng: rocksteady classic (1967) ~ mandarin vocal ~ sung in the style of chinese opera (cheng abetted by chinese-jamaican musician byron lee) drifting in & out of gallery space...

 (nunchaku dub/background)

...reverberations/displacements of history ~ chinese coolies (low paid workers) brought to work jamaican plantations after the abolition of slavery (transported in the same slave ships) ~ a subsequent history of chinese-owned recording studios helping shape the sounds of bob marley, lee "scratch" perry & augustus pablo, amongst others (search: "chinese influence on reggae", "vp records/history"...) 

Photo by Jules Lister

...here & there, lengths of sugar cane (plantation echoes...) a preponderance of ropes (slave ship echoes...)

("he walked all the way into darkness")

nation family ~ video installation (2017), based upon the experiences of a cousin sent to work in a chinese labour camp in the 1970's (same location presently a booming domestic tourist destination) ~ recurrence of dr zhivago theme (film set against the backdrop of the russian revolution & ensuing civil war/banned in the soviet union). grainy home movie beach footage/unexpected swerve into 1970's light entertainment stylings. six dancers in spangly tops & black leggings moving to dr zhivago theme (k-tel disco revision) white(washed) background/plastic pot plants (history remade/remodelled?)  

so much to process amongst vibrant imperial reds/reconfigurations in kitschy maximalist arrays. unexpected histories/transitory, ghostly identities in our chaotic, globalised world...

William Garvin                                                                                                                             

Dinu Li, A Phantom's Vibe 
ESEA Contemporary, Manchester
July 22 – 29 October 2023