Berlin-based artist duo Marta Stanisława Sala (born in Katowice, 1985) and Cheong Kin Man (Macau, 1987) have brought their first joint exhibition to Poland. “Flora Macanensis” opened last Tuesday (7 January) at Katowice’s City Library (MBPK) at Bogucice, alongside a one-hour artist talk focused on Macau.
As reported by “Jornal Tribuna de Macau” on 10 January, the event was enthusiastically received by the audience and described by MBPK as a “magic evening” on social media. During the talk, Sala and Cheong discussed their collaboration with Lam Sio Man at the 2023 Macau Biennale. Lam previously curated the Macau Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
At the vernissage, Sala and Cheong unveiled a new artwork: a series of seven posters, also titled “Flora Macanensis”. Hand-printed and incorporating elements from Sala’s family textile archive, the series tells the story of Flora, Cheong’s mother, who fled post-revolutionary China by boat to the then-Portuguese colony, where she was aided upon arrival by Vietnamese refugees.
The duo’s other artwork, a series of three textile pieces, combines Cheong’s Chinese father’s life-risking journey to Macau in search of a better life, with references to Polish Jesuit Michał Boym’s mid-17th century voyages to and adventurer Maurice Beniowski’s passage through Macau in 1771.
This textile series was first presented in Spring 2024 at the duo’s debut German exhibition, hosted by Krakauer Haus, Kraków’s only cultural mission to a foreign country. The exhibition was held in collaboration with Nuremberg City Council and sponsored by Portugal’s Fundação Oriente.
Also on display are “Apocalypses”, a mini sci-fi artist book written entirely in a fictional language (with Polish translation) and commissioned for the Macau Biennale two years ago, as well as an experimental video, “Pomnik do Noszenia” (“The Ready-Made Monument”). In the video, Portuguese navigator António de Abreu Freire recounts his brief meeting with Lech Wałęsa in the early 1980s.
“Flora Macanensis” is on view at the Bogucice Library (Wajdy 21, Katowice) until 28 February.