Kwan Queenie Li – O, Engraft You New

Kwan Queenie Li. O, Engraft You New, 2024. Two-channel moving stills. Co-commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff for the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
Kwan Queenie Li. O, Engraft You New, 2024. Two-channel moving stills. Co-commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff for the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.

“1/10000 chance of matching with a stranger

Matched, do they not count as strangers? 

1/2 chance of matching with my siblings

Unmatched, do they count as strangers?”

Kwan Queenie Li’s (SMACT ’22) new work O, Engraft You New contains duo-channel snippets documenting the process of peripheral stem cell transplantation (PBSCT), as the artist’s close acquaintance had their blood type coincidentally matched with an anonymous last-stage cancer patient. During the transplantation process, the donor’s body is connected to a separator, where stem cells are extracted, with remaining blood being returned to the donor.

The work’s title recalls the historical case of the Japanese nuclear fuel plant worker Hisashi Ouchi, known as “the world’s most radioactive man”, who was an early recipient of the transplantation in 1999. Ouchi, however, did not survive due to a high amount of radioactivity that ultimately killed the newly planted stem cells. The title also quotes Sonnet 15 of William Shakespeare, in which the poet compared the mortality of humans to plants, and their unavoidable decay with time. The title hints at a layered reading of this medical operation from historical and botanical perspectives: flown, grown, optimized.

These relationships are further unpacked in a performance lecture jointly presented with artists Zillah Bowes and Roanna Holmes-Frodsham in the program “Sweet Loss”, in which the video installation is expanded with projected archival images and spoken words stemming from multidisciplinary artistic research. 

It is now part of the Videotage Media Art Collection, which is devoted to the preservation and expansion of a rich and diverse collection of video and media art in Hong Kong, with materials dating back to the later part of the 20th century.

Kwan Queenie Li. O, Engraft You New, 2024. Two-channel moving stills. Co-commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff for the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
Kwan Queenie Li. O, Engraft You New, 2024. Two-channel moving stills. Co-commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff for the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
Kwan Queenie Li. O, Engraft You New, 2024. Two-channel moving stills. Co-commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff for the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.

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