Gazing at Charred Joy confronts the viewer with the deliberate collapse of binary oppositions—specifically, the friction between commercialized escapism and harsh geopolitical reality.
Applying Jacques Derrida's Deconstructionism, the work dissolves the pristine, animated euphoria of Disney's Snow White into the chaotic physical violence of brawls within the Ukrainian Parliament. This international collision is deeply rooted in my lived experience as a Hong Kong artist. The manicured cartoon smile mirrors the manufactured sociopolitical peace mandated in post-2019 Hong Kong, while the physical violence echoes the collective traumas and unhealed scars of our society.
The application of controlled fire further evokes the haunting devastation of the November 2025 Tai Po fire inferno—a tragedy that exposed severe systemic failure and regulatory paralysis underneath the city's glossy facade. Through this destructive process, the superficial control is violently ruptured, forcing the viewer past the enforced illusions of modern stability to confront the raw existential void, public grief, and beauty found within the ashes.
