Modern Letter Writing for Hong Kong invites visitors to write a letter to a “lost hometown” and add it to a pile that continually grows over the duration of the showcase. This installation encourages collective engagement around intimate connections to hometowns against a backdrop of complex and intersecting colonial experiences.

The title and premise of this project was sparked by a second-hand book which was originally published in the 1960s in Hong Kong as a style-guide for writing letters in English. Instantly provocative in a contemporary setting, this book raises questions around the use of language for domination and oppression, as well as the trappings of nostalgia. This installation draws on this formal mode of communication which is then crumpled and discarded into the pile to evoke shared catharsis.