I wrote and illustrated a picture-book last year, Mr Matos Goes to Buy Tomatoes, a tale of Mr Matos who lives around Bird Garden and goes to buy tomatoes, the tomatoes fall onto the ground on his way home and turns into a giant plant. Quite an absurd story as it is, but the background is all about Macau, or to be specific, the familiar traditional tenement buildings of Macau. I like walking, especially walking in the old district. Day or night, as long as time allows I would choose to walk instead of taking any transportation. The reason is simple. I get to see many things when I walk. I am attracted by the facade of the tenement buildings, the sunbathing quilts hanging on the balcony, or simply to find traces of living that is left behind. What I see every day is stored subconsciously and become handy materials when I draw, the inevitable scenes of my story. When I conceive about the exhibition, I plan to bring Mr Matos’ world into real-life, since it would be interesting to see drawings of book size enlarging into something big. Thinking deeper, I come to realise that it was I who created Mr Matos’ world based on my surroundings, and now I am about to bring Matos’ world to reality. It is not very direct and is almost a roundabout but it explains the meaning of the work. What is drawn is always the sum of experience and time. I have a zine series called Day After Day and is comprised of two parts: Just Another Normal Day and Time After Time, which looks at the city through an everyday lens. Now as I think about it, how many more days do we have to be exact? In our language, we use “infinite good” to describe the beauty of the sunset and to express the inevitability that everything ends eventually, so let us take a close look at the City before she is no longer this way.

Yang Sio Maan