Though Leung’s works are highly attentive to their physical surroundings, she conceives of them not as site-specific but “context-contingent,” capable of being realized again and again in different places, but each time conditioned by institutional circumstances that would determine their form. Likewise, they accrue new layers of meaning as they circulate through different situations. When Violets 2 was originally exhibited at Netwerk Aalst, for instance, it was installed on the floor of the gallery space one story above the bar from which the pipes had been removed, mirroring their former placement, only this time as a waste product instead of a conduit for its elimination, as if the building were spilling its guts. Subsequent presentations, however, must contend with the challenges of one set of architectural footprints descending on another, with the reconfigured pipes now foregrounding the spatial eccentricities of their new containers. Meanwhile, Shrooms is particularly effective in group exhibitions, where it acts as a kind of fungal encroachment on the works of other artists, subtly influencing their placement.
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