In October and November 2005, Leung Chi Wo made visits to 21 households in Sapporo of Japan and listened to the stories about their living spaces. Afterwards, their recorded monologues were played separately with small speakers installed all round inside an ordinary apartment at street level open to public in Sapporo. Upon entering, it was a room of multiple whisperings until the audience moved toward each speaker to listen to each story. The idea of home is expressed with reference to the diverse background of each individual, in spite of probably a collective value of living situation in Sapporo. This first version of Open Home not only encouraged the audience’s contemplation of one of the most banal subjects, but also blurred the border between the private and the public realm in the name of art.

LEUNG Chi-wo was born in Hong Kong. He graduated with a MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1997 after studying photography study in l’Istituto per lo Sviluppo Socio-Economico dello Spilimberghese in Italy and an internship in the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent, Belgium. He has done a few exhibitions in Hong Kong, New York, Melbourne, Tokyo, Oslo, Vienna, Hamburg and Toronto, etc. Awards received include the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (1997) and Urban Council Award of the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial (1996). In 2000, he has held a solo exhibition in the Queens Museum of Art, New York. In 2001, his site-specific project was exhibited in the Hong Kong Pavilion in the Venice Biennale.