This work shows the artist—the performer—encountering plants in his surrounding and imitating or mimicking their forms. The plants are of various sizes and in different locations, some of them in a pot and some of them out on a street. The performer extends his hands and legs to imitate the appearance of the plants. In this work, Tsui extends the measurement of the body movement into body gestures.

The performer’s physical movement or action aims to inform a gesture that signifies a plant. Here, the performer’s body movement is used to imitate or mimic. This concept of imitation or mimicry is further developed later in a series of works called The Shortcut to the Systematic Life, in which the performer mimics the urban environments he encounters. For the artist, An Imitation: Mimicry shows a way to learn—or, for him, a shortcut—how to conceal the human body in an urban environment. The artist has been interested in biology for some time, and through this interest he became obsessed with the insect’s natural instinct of mimicry. Unlike the mimicry of the insect, however, mimicry in Tsui’s performer does not transform him in response to any dangerous surroundings he encounters. Rather, the performer imitates the plants and conceptually becomes the “plants. ” Thus, the notion of mimicry in An Imitation: Mimicry informs a simple and generic meaning of mimicry in terms of imitation. But imitation, in fact, does not necessarily equate to mimicry. An Imitation: Mimicry reveals this ambiguity. In The Shortcut to the Systematic Life, the performer becomes inclined to mimicry, rather than to imitation of the urban environment. An Imitation: Mimicry can also be regarded as the artist’s development of the art/game concept. Imitation or mimicry is a kind of game, particularly seen at carnival, in which people wear elaborate costumes. The notion of game in An Imitation: Mimicry addresses appearance and characteristics, rather than competition. An Imitation: Mimicry also creates a sense of comic effect. Through the exaggeration of body movements and gestures, the performer attempts to accomplish a ridiculous imitation or even mimicry.