Kind of Blue

Mexican artist, Bosco Sodi’s mixed medium painting

We took a walk in Wong Chuk Hang, in and out of non-descript lobbies. We rode through countless columns of industrial elevators manned by old men on weathered high stools, or was it the other way round? The lines on their hands and faces were way more complex than the girdled grid gates we slid past to get into the mechanical boxes. What were the stories here? I don’t know — our lack of a common tongue meant I could only smile politely as we crossed thresholds. If only.

I had lost count of the number of buildings and floors we opened up into: the glass doors to knock on, grey walls to turn around the corner from, and one that greeted us with familiar wafts reminiscent of Po Chai Wan ingredients — fragrant, medicinal. Assuring.

This one was behind a glass door and a grey wall.

Bosco Sodi’s work in his ‘A Thousand Li of Mountains and Rivers’ exhibition

The choice of blue was deliberate, turquoise to be exact. Mexican contemporary artist, Bosco Sodi picked this shade for this range of textural artworks he created in Hong Kong in a span of two weeks. He’d already created a similar set in red, one of which was also in this gallery, and which I initially deemed to be an angrier version of what we first encountered.

That stopped me: what makes a colour angry? Why did I immediately associate the deep red with anger, over it as a colour of love, life, danger, strength, and joy?

Blue, on the other hand, gives me a sense of tranquility and freedom. Yet, as my title (and Miles Davis’ iconic modal jazz album) alludes, it also evokes melancholy.

It boils down to cultural conditioning and experiences — two things that keep getting shaped as our societies grow, and as we develop along with it. Increasingly, the cultural lines have also blurred with globalisation.

For example, in Chinese culture, red represents “purity” because it’s the colour brides wear when they get married (our traditional wedding dresses are red, and as the brides are expected to be virgins on their wedding day, red is therefore “pure”). White only came to be the colour associated with purity because it became synonymous with cleanliness, and as white garments were harder and costlier to keep clean. The colour communicated the often inspirational higher status and wealth of the wearer. These days, a Chinese wedding is likely to have both a red dress (for the traditional ceremony) and a white gown.

Blue also wasn’t always the colour for boys. In 1918, pink were used to mark boys, and blue, girls. It wasn’t until the 1940s in America that the colours were switched and dictated for the genders. In Singapore, where I spent most of my childhood, this was also the case – globalisation, its powers and effects, was already ingrained in the 1990s.

That is likely why red is anger to me. But everything has three sides – two opposites and one neutral – and globalisation is no different. While globalisation has instilled these cultural norms in me, it has also afforded me the privilege to question these would-be truths.