Dinu Li
Where Memories Take Me

March 26  - May 9, 2008
Dinu Li is a traveller between cultures. He spent his early childhood in Hong Kong as the youngest son of a large Chinese family before coming to England just before the age of 8. There, he and his family found a new home, yet in their thoughts they often returned to their home country, a China before the Cultural Revolution. His mother, in particular, lived both with and through her memories, including those of her own childhood and youth. In China, a ritual had developed between mother and son that was to continue in their adopted home. As a reward for his weekly tidying of her dressing table, his mother would show the young Dinu Li family photos before he went to bed. The subsequent bedtime stories sent Li on imaginary journeys. Eyes closed, he would imagine scenes in which the borders between his own memories and his mother’s tales dissolved.

In autumn 2001, an accidental discovery reminded Li of this childhood ritual.
»That evening in 2001, I made a new agreement with my mother – to travel with her and visit the sites of her memories. Memories that had also become my own. I wanted to catalogue them, from as far back as she could remember to as near the present as possible. I wanted to compare the actual with what I held in my imagination.«

Dinu Li (*1965 Hong Kong) lives in Manchester (UK), where he emigrated with his family at the beginning of the 1970’s. The contrasting cultures in which he grew up have led him to investigate his own roots. Li’s work moves between documentary, oral history, chance observation and his own flights of fantasy. He works in film, photography and video. Through his installations Dinu Li continually creates a new his own memories.


www.dinuli.com