SONG DONG’S 36 Calendars installation offers, through its participatory, dialogic dimension involving more than 400 members of the Hong Kong public, a way to examine local Hong Kong perceptions of history, and also perhaps highlights the issue of the difference that may exist between Mainland and Hong Kong senses of history. Calendars are a traditional…
Read MoreSINCE 1997, HONG Kong has been a space of constant debate as it has transitioned from a colonial outpost of Britain to a Special Administrative Region of China, still operating as a capitalist free port until 2047 as stipulated by the Basic Law. From social concerns regarding the monumental gap between rich and poor and…
Read MoreHONG KONG HAS provided the documentary and conceptual material for much of MAP Office’s practice since 1995. Here, we unfold chronological the set of tools that guided us to use Hong Kong as a cutting-edge laboratory for an innovative appropriation of the city/territory. 1995-2000 Starting with a research-oriented platform on territorial development, we set up…
Read More“I had never believed in ‘political art,’ but in 2012 I ran for the Legislative Council as an artist.” “The art world is polarized into two camps. There are artists who energetically participate in social movements, gradually distancing themselves from art and even believing aesthetics to be pointless decoration. In the other camp are artists…
Read MoreIF THERE IS anywhere that the juggernauts of the Chinese media could market art as an aspirational lifestyle, that place is Hong Kong— and yet nowhere else does the reality of art as a lifestyle diverge more absurdly from this imagery. Ironically enough, it was probably through the boom in Mainland contemporary art that Hong…
Read MoreDURING HONG KONG’S colonial period, the British administration was unwilling to cultivate a cultural mainstream for fear that it would threaten the position of the government. As a consequence, a divide-and-conquer strategy characterized the allocation of cultural space and art funding in post-1960s Hong Kong. This approach was intended to preclude the formation of a…
Read MoreWYNDHAM STREET IN Central has all the features of a typical Hong Kong street: it is a narrow, steep, winding road bustling with activity. Heading up towards where it joins Hollywood Road, the street gets even more crooked, the sides of this famous section lined with shops selling curios and collectibles from all over the…
Read MoreFor a contemporary art exhibition of any scale, plans can change quickly. Whether it is achieving the potential of the concept through implementation or meeting local requirements for fire safety at the site, the audience remains unaware of the multitude of factors that influence the final outcome. So for artists, their artworks, and exhibition layout,…
Read MoreUpon exiting the elevator, you come face to face with an installation by the Xijing Men, a large Xijing flag hanging on the wall opposite the elevator. In front of the entrance to the exhibition hall is a pile of carefully stacked, clean cardboard boxes partitioning off the “Exit and Entry Bureau.” But this affected…
Read MoreIn the state of Kerala in southern India, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale opened its doors on December 12, 2012. The picturesque old colonial town of Kochi, or as the locals call it, “God’s own country,” welcomed over 150,000 visitors in the first month of the exhibition. Many works of the 94 participating artists were made on…
Read MoreOnly a couple of years since the ZKM first fell for globalization, we step again onto the terrain of global reality as soon as we enter “Move on Asia,” an exhibition imported from Alternative Space LOOP in Seoul. Here, more than 140 works are gathered under the “Asian” label, with artists from China, Hong Kong,…
Read MoreTHE GUAN XIAO solo exhibition “Survivors’ Hunting” is divided into two parts to best suit the exhibition space. As one enters, one is met with deliberately manufactured chaos: installations, sculptures, and pictures with indeterminate relationships all set out together in a comparatively cramped space. Although the next space is relatively spacious, on view is only…
Read MoreNOT VACANT, JUST INVISIBLE IN 2011, YUCHENG Chou held an exhibition in Taiwan’s Hong-Gah Museum titled “TOA Lighting” (1). When the exhibition first opened and the audience, stepping onto smooth floorboards, entered the exhibition space, they were greeted with bare walls and not a pedestal in sight. The whole space was devoid of anything that…
Read MoreSIXTEEN YEARS HAVE passed since the Hong Kong handover in 1997. The writer Yesi, whose real name is Leung Pingkwan, was born in Guangdong in 1949 and grew up in Hong Kong. Over the past 16 years, he has mentioned his desire to “write about Hong Kong in earnest” on more than one occasion. This…
Read MoreIN A BRIEF History of Curating, Hans-Ulrich Obrist speaks candidly with Lucy Lippard about the most significant motivation for the creation of his oral history: the lack of documentation in the history of exhibition and curation. Hence the term “Brief History” rather than “Interviews” appearing in the title. In this book, Obrist interviews 11 veteran…
Read MoreART STUDENTS ARE a familiar sight in Xiaozhou Village: as the bus conductor calls out “Xiaozhou Village Entrance,” the bus, which starts out empty from the university town, is met with an influx of students. As a rule, they are tourists, or art academy students who have gathered together to prepare for exams. Lugging backpacks,…
Read MoreOFTEN REFERRED TO as the pioneer of conceptualism in the Philippines, Roberto Chabet (b. 1937, Manila) is known for his cerebral, elusive compositions of readymades and everyday materials to include mirrors, plywood, neon lights, drawings, rubber tires, indigenous wood, maps, strings, envelopes, paper, and so on. Chabet’s play on form and meaning, process-oriented, anti-monumental practices…
Read MoreTHE BODY, AS the most apparent symbol and object of all the various forms of conscious- ness and conceptual undertakings, along with the evolution of modern industrial society and contemporary consumerist culture, has itself become a prominent discursive object, which is continuously being redefined, rewritten, and disciplined. Of the artistic practices that correspond to or…
Read More“Condition↔Reaction: Young Artists in China and Their Work” is a video-based project organized by LEAP magazine. Through a feature documentary, it offers a portrait of Chinese artists born after 1976. Alongside this is a selection of 15 video works from 11 young artists that reveal their creators’ individual responses to and rebellions against the status…
Read MoreDuring Art Basel Hong Kong, LEAP magazine and the DSL Collection join hands for the video project “Not a Gallery.” At the Modern Media booth, number S9 near the VIP entrance, we have mounted an exhibition without a single tangible artwork: using their mobile devices instead, the audience may visit the DSL Collection’s virtual museum…
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