Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to present the work of pioneering conceptual artist On Kawara, in the first major retrospective in the world conceived after his passing in 2014. On Kawara revolutionised how art can be constructed and experienced, building a lifelong artistic practice defined by a deeply human approach. Consisting of profound gestures that transform the mundane act of marking time into a meditation on human consciousness, each piece from the artist is remarkably personal and yet speaks to universal human experiences. Tai Kwun’s exhibition presents the artist’s most iconic series and features an episodic section dedicated to the artist’s visit to Hong Kong in 1978. On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules will be on view from 23 May to 17 August 2025 in the 1st Floor gallery space of the JC Contemporary and the F Hall.
On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules explores works that reshape our understanding of time and existence. Tracing his daily routines throughout the world, the exhibition features all of On Kawara’s celebrated series, spanning over half a century of work: Today, I Am Still Alive, I Got Up, I Met, I Went, I Read and live performances of One Million Years.
The Today series immortalises Karawa’s position in time, and also space: each painting consists solely of the date on which it was executed, depicted in simple white lettering against a solid background, with subtleties in formatting and accompanying newspaper clippings pointing to the locality and current events in its place of creation. The dates, stamps, and images that proliferate in the I Am Still Alive, I Got Up, I Met, and I Wentseries provide the same spatiotemporal context, yet offer a more personal insight, with each telegram reading like private whispers sent across continents, and each postcard sketching a tender map of ordinary days.
At the heart of the exhibition is a special room dedicated to Kawara’s visit to Hong Kong in 1978, during his 46th birthday. Throughout his time in the city, the artist continued his rigorous daily rituals, creating Today series paintings while also diligently documenting his movements through his other ongoing series. These pieces trace Kawara’s footsteps across Hong Kong, emphasising his deep connection to the Asia-Pacific region and grounding his global portfolio within a local context. The episodic section further examines Kawara as a global citizen and artist-philosopher, probing how his engaging work bridges the everyday and the metaphysical, simplicity and complexity, the present and the eternal. His minimal yet meaning-rich practice captures a paradox familiar in today’s globalised world: finding stability within perpetual movement.
Shifting the exhibition’s perspective from the intimate to the expansive is the powerful piece, One Million Years. This ambitious work moves away from Kawara’s focus on the everyday, instead bringing visitors into contact with time on a vast, ahistorical scale. Respectively titled One Million Years: Past and One Million Years: Future, each work comprises ten binders containing, in total, two thousand pages containing one million years’ worth of dates. This exhibition presents One Million Years as a live installation, with a rotating cast of international performers and volunteers reciting the typed numbers year after year. This immersive experience allows Kawara’s boundary-pushing exploration of time to be preserved and continuously reinterpreted, inviting the audience to act as active participants in his conceptual universe.
Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will host a variety of public programmes and educational events exploring the exhibition’s themes. These include Tai Kwun Conversations moderated by Ying Kwok in dialogue with co-curator Hou Hanru, artists Au Hoi Lam and Yang Zhenzhong; Teacher’s Morning and Teacher’s Workshop sessions, and Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary, which explore the artist’s use of materials and narrative. Guided Tour: Who’s Next? will provide docent-led tours delving into the artist’s creative process, techniques, and inspirations. The Hi! & Seek Corner, an open space on the 2nd floor, will be open as usual for visitor dialogue, exploration, and interactive experiences related to the exhibition.
Robert Ryman / May 28 – Aug 1, 2025 / Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 28, 5pm – 7pm / Walkthrough led by Susan Dunne, Senior Director at David Zwirner, starting at 6pm /
David Zwirner 5-6/F, H Queen’s 80 Queen’s Road Central Central, Hong Kong Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 7pm +852 21195900
David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Robert Ryman (1930–2019) at the gallery’s Hong Kong location. Marking Ryman’s first solo presentation in Greater China, this exhibition will feature a range of works from the early 1960s through the 2000s, offering a concise survey of the materials, supports, painterly treatments, and ways of engaging with the wall that Ryman utilized over the course of his six-decade-long career.
Ryman is widely celebrated for his tactile works using white paint in all its many permutations, which he executed using a range of painterly mediums on various supports including paper, canvas, linen, aluminum, vinyl, and newsprint. Emerging in the 1960s, Ryman eschewed self-contained representational and abstract imagery, instead giving precedence to the physical gesture of applying paint to a support. His works are novel and sensitive explorations of the visual, material, and experiential qualities of his mediums that exist in a dialogue with their surroundings.
Installed nonchronologically across the Hong Kong gallery’s two floors, the exhibition visualizes how Ryman’s early works maintain a compelling dialogue with those from later in his career and vice versa, underscoring the continued vibrancy and inexhaustibility of his art.
T REE O GO D EVIL / gdm / Hong Kong / Mar 19 – May 24, 2025 /
Tsang Kin-Wah’s latest solo exhibition, T REE O GO D EVIL, is conceived as a total installation – an immersive visual and auditory environment that blends the artist’s characteristic use of textual quotations with edited video excerpts, including films or online clips depicting scenes of violence. The work revisits the artist’s enduring thematic concerns, drawing inspiration from the Bible, prophetic imagery of the apocalypse and current events to interrogate the contemporary meaning of moral values such as good and evil, the human capacity for judgement and humanity’s place within what Tsang frequently describes as an illusory world.
Visitors enter the gallery through a narrow corridor, crossing metal grilles almost imperceptibly before arriving in the main exhibition space. At its centre stands a large pillar, a massive tree whose trunk is covered in letters and phrases. Its branches extend across the ceiling, made of coiled and uncoiled text, as well as suspended words and letters. While the formal language is consistent with Tsang’s typical visual vocabulary, this iteration introduces a significant transformation: the inscriptions appear to have been scorched; they are covered in soot. The letters affixed to the trunk are not projected but physically glued and the artist has set them alight before scraping them with a utility knife. For the first time, Tsang engages physically with the material, enacting and even completing what can be interpreted as a gesture of total destruction. The gallery’s central pillar lends a new materiality to the projections: whereas previous works were characterised by their immateriality, these video elements now take tangible form and appear to take root – only to be immediately reduced to ash.
This tree is the Tree of Knowledge. In the Book of Genesis, it marks the pivotal moment in which morality emerges: once Eve bites into the fruit, she and Adam acquire knowledge of good and evil. From that moment on, they must live with these oppositional concepts, bear the burden of guilt and establish a moral framework or normative system to navigate the world. The tree is a recurring motif in Tsang’s oeuvre. In the video installation 6 + 1Days (2020), for instance, it is the sole stable element amid the daily surge of catastrophe. Depicting it in flames constitutes a radical gesture – the destruction of what little remained intact; the annihilation of the very foundations of humanity or at least those of the Christian worldview.
Installation view of T REE O GO D EVIL by Tsang Kin-Wah at gdm Hong Kong,
The spatial design of the installation is informed by a conceptual trilogy, playing on the phonetic similarity between “tree” and “three” in English. This trinity refers simultaneously to the crucifixion of Jesus flanked by two convicts and to the Divine Trinity within Catholic tradition. The central space of the gallery is extended by two smaller adjoining areas which, while appearing to offer routes of escape, ultimately lead to dead ends. The first culminates in a mirror, confronting the viewer with their own reflection. The second leads to a space that resembles a prison cell – though physically open, it is bounded by metal bars. Projected onto the wall, on either side of this gate, is a black-and-white video constructed from footage of the execution of a Jordanian pilot by terrorist group ISIS in 2015. The man is shown from behind as he is set ablaze. To the right of the scene again stands a desolate tree, seemingly bearing silent witness to the atrocity.
Positioned on either side of the central tree are two old television monitors looping short video clips. The monitor on the right focuses on the ISIS execution footage, while the one on the left shows a Ukrainian soldier trapped beneath rubble. His repetitive movements – looped endlessly – appear futile, almost absurd. The footage was captured by a drone, the very same drone that is also carrying the bomb calibrated to end his life.
Installation view of T REE O GO D EVIL by Tsang Kin-Wah at gdm Hong Kong,
For Tsang, this marks a pivotal shift in the visual culture of war: for the first time, the viewer is aligned with the perspective of the drone and so with the bomb itself. The spectator becomes the weapon – implicated, complicit. Among the figures quoted in the installation are criminals, theorists of evil and morally transgressive philosophers. Yet evil, Tsang suggests, is not an external force; it resides within us. This is underscored by his subversion of the biblical Genesis, the opening of which he rephrases as: “In the beginning is the evil, and the evil is you.”
The installation as a whole invites critical reflection on our ways of seeing violence – our ability to acknowledge it, to morally account for it and, perhaps, to act upon it. At the same time, the mise-en-scène reminds us that we are immersed in an illusion, positioned outside the bounds of reality. As in Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, shadows are cast upon the walls, intermingling with text and projected imagery. And, as in Plato’s cave, the possibility of liberation exists – but only if one desires it. Though the corridors lead nowhere, the metal gates are not locked. Is there, then, another reality beyond this one?
And yet, when questioned, Tsang firmly rejects any suggestion of optimism. No enlightened philosopher will come to rescue us. For him, the age-old battle between good and evil may itself be obsolete. These categories, he argues, have become relative. We know all too well that yesterday’s terrorist is not necessarily tomorrow’s. Who, today, would still speak of “good” as an absolute value?
Two seemingly contradictory ideas underpin this new work: first, that evil is omnipresent; and second, that the world is merely an illusion – one in which we are confined, whether willingly or not. It reminds us of the provocative assertion by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard that the Gulf War did not take place; for most people, he argued, it existed only as televised imagery. Through constant exposure to violent images, we cease to believe in their reality. A similar phenomenon occurs in response to Tsang’s installation: despite its intense subject matter, the violence it portrays becomes blunted, in spite of a deliberately unsettling and overwhelming soundscape composed of roaring flames and sinister squeals.
Installation view of T REE O GO D EVIL by Tsang Kin-Wah at gdm Hong Kong,
What, then, are we really looking at? It appears that the installation is, above all, a confrontation between the artist and the conditions of reality, as well as a meditation on the aestheticisation of violence. The notion of “pleasure” recurs throughout the accompanying texts – likely referencing both the supposed sadistic pleasure some individuals derive from the suffering of others and the (perhaps guilty) pleasure of the artist who draws on such violence as the very substance of his artistic production.
Viewed through this lens, the installation can be read as both a self-portrait and a meta-reflection on the nature of art itself. For the first time, Tsang incorporates personal objects into his work: his old glasses, a book of poetry, a vintage catalogue that he has burned. These fragments, buried beneath the gravel scattered throughout the installation, suggest a desire for renewal. French writer André Malraux defined art as an anti-destiny. While Tsang portrays humanity as trapped within a dark and relentless determinism, the artist’s gesture may remain what allows for the transformation and re-creation of the world, even when emerging from a landscape of ruins.
T REE O GO D EVIL gdm 爍樂畫廊 香港 2025年3月19日至5月24日
曾建華的最新個人展覽「T REE O GO D EVIL」構思為一個完整的裝置——一個沉浸式的視覺和聽覺環境，融合了他對文字引用與影片片段剪接，包括電影或網上影片中的暴力場景。作品主題是曾建華一直以來持續關注的議題，他從《聖經》、預言世界末日的映像和時事中汲取靈感，探討善惡等道德價值觀在當代的意義、人類的判斷能力以及人類在這個被曾建華稱之為虛幻世界中的位置。
White Cube Hong Kong is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Italian artist Salvatore Emblema (1929–2006). Marking the first ever presentation of the artist’s works in Asia, the exhibition follows a solo show at White Cube Paris in 2024.
Spanning a 30-year period of works made between the 1960s and 1990s, the Hong Kong exhibition includes Emblema’s signature paintings made with raw pigments on jute canvas, as well as Untitled / Ricerca sul paesaggio (1972), a suspended sculpture comprising a metal net hung across the gallery’s walls.
Born in 1929 in Terzigno, Naples, Emblema’s practice, with its singular focus on the qualities of light, space and transparency, diverged from that of his contemporaries in Italy’s post-war avant-garde. Inspired by the landscape of his upbringing – a volcanic red zone on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius – Emblema worked predominantly with natural materials, utilising soils, stones and other agricultural substances to extract his pigments.
His artistic approach was further shaped by encounters with Jean Dubuffet’s earth and gravel compositions in the early 1950s, as well as his first visit to New York in 1957. It was here that Emblema became acquainted with the Abstract Expressionist movement, drawing particular inspiration from the colour-field paintings of Mark Rothko.
Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall / Hong Kong / May 17, 2025 / Ernest Wan /
Among the offerings of this year’s French May Arts Festival was a concert from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Trio Wanderer Plays Beethoven Triple Concerto. It was memorable, however, neither for the acclaimed chamber ensemble from France nor for the great German composer’s work but for the Czech guest conductor Tomáš Netopil’s rendition of the other, equally buoyant works on the programme, both written by his countrymen.
Like the Beethoven work it preceded, Bohuslav Martinů’s seven-minute Overture H 345 (1953) is in bright C major and is sometimes redolent of a baroque concerto grosso. Under Netopil’s assured baton, the orchestra filled the auditorium with a warm glow of sound from the first bars, and the music, with its insistent succession of 16th notes and chains of syncopated string figures, chugged its way at a healthy clip to a firm conclusion.
Trio Wanderer’s Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, Raphaël Pidoux and Vincent Coq playing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Courtesy the Hong Kong Sinfonietta.
The Sinfonietta was joined in the Beethoven concerto (1804) by Trio Wanderer, whose members, says the official bio, are known for their “almost telepathic understanding of each other”. The absolute absence of eye contact among them throughout the performance, however, might have contributed to the impression that each member of the threesome was playing as if he were a soloist rather than interacting synergistically. Indeed, despite violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian’s beautiful tone, cellist Raphaël Pidoux’s nimbleness and pianist Vincent Coq’s precision, the collaborative effort was less than gripping and seemed emotionally detached, a situation not helped by Phillips-Varjabédian’s air of nonchalance, the inaccurate intonation at his entries apparently not bothering him at all. Perhaps these seasoned performers sounded somewhat uninterested and hence uninteresting simply because this concerto, not the composer’s most inspired, is the only one in the standard repertoire for piano trio and orchestra, and they have done it to death.
The focus shifted back to conductor and orchestra after the intermission, and it made a world of difference when the former had evidently convinced the latter of the worth of a relatively unfamiliar work and inspired the players to give him their all. Thus, the fortissimo statement of the opening theme of Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony (1880) was truly grandioso,as the score instructs, and although Netopil adopted a moderate tempo for this first movement, the vigorous orchestral playing prevented it from sounding ponderous, even in the climactic pesante passages. While the string phrases in the lyrical music of the Adagio were lovingly moulded, none of the startling outbursts elsewhere in the movement were smoothed over. The Furiant beguiled with not just the expected metric ambiguity characteristic of this dance but also the playful changes in dynamics, whether gradual or sudden. Near the start of the Finale, the exhilarating accelerando to the main tempo showed great promise. The remainder of the movement lived up to it, with the presto coda, which sports breathless string runs and a proud brass chorale, whipping the audience up into a joyous frenzy. Under the charismatic leadership of a conductor with the music in his blood, the Sinfonietta surpassed itself.
The Seventies / White Cube / Hong Kong / Mar 26 – May 17, 2025 /
Few things can prepare you for what a chromatic explosion on canvas is really like. You might have seen pictures of Lynne Drexler works on a screen and thought that she uses colour in an extraordinary way, but her work is one of the many demonstrations that nothing compares to being able to stand in front of a painting and stare into it for as long as possible.
Drexler (1928-1999) is often described as an abstract expressionist and, later, a representational landscape and still life painter, who kept on applying her distinctive way with colour to render backgrounds – walls, skies, mountains or seas – creating something between abstraction and representation. Drexler herself used to say that she was a “colourist”, something she started developing during her years in college, in New York, where she was taught by Hans Hofmann – who had already developed his “push and pull” theory of colour, in which he would put together contrasting blocks of colour to form abstract images – and Robert Motherwell, also engaged in contrasting colour-block experimentation. These masters only confirmed to the young Drexler the importance of what had been a constant in her aesthetic landscape since childhood – she started painting when she was eight – but it took a violent personal crisis to make colour the all-encompassing force that it is in the series of paintings she produced in the 1970s: rich, high-chroma compositions that are truly striking. A selection of these have been brought to Hong Kong by White Cube, in a show called The Seventies, which introduces Drexler’s work through large oil-on-canvases and wax crayon-on-paper works. It’s the first time pieces from this period have been put on show in Asia.
From a distance, works such as Titan/Titan Remembered (1975), Winter Reflections (Siberian Song) (1975) and Blupe (1973) are studies in yellow, grey-black and blue. Up close, the tessellated brush strokes that compose her abstract, organic shapes, mostly circles, wavy curves and short lines, are an eye-fooling mixture of a rather large palette, in which greens, purples and oranges are all called in to help create an overall effect. A sense of chromatic uniformity comes to the fore only through the union of countless shades.
These works, in their meticulous celebration of colour, were the product of what must have been a deeply traumatic occurrence: after a particularly grim time in her personal life that involved a mental breakdown, Drexler developed an inability to differentiate colour that lasted for a few months. It would have been scary for someone so devoted to chroma to turn colour-blind, even for a relatively short span of time, but her reaction once this challenge was over was to dwell with even more abandon on all the subtleties and interplay of different tints and shades, producing mesmerising mosaics of pigment.
Some of her artistic inspirations can be detected in her works: in Titan/Titan Remembered and Burst Blossoms (1971), a revisited memory of Gustav Klimt’s mosaic-like backgrounds is clear to see, while Drexler’s lifelong admiration for Matisse lingers in all her paintings, especially the later still lifes. In the paintings on show, it is visible in particular in pieces like Blupe, Foam (1971) and Gossomer (1972). These are explorations in blue and turquoise; green, azure, aquamarine and orange; and yellow, sienna and acid green, characterised by abstract forms painted in small, thick brushstrokes, with one colour and one texture added at a time, in a painstaking, patient process. The rhythm we see in these works, however, is not purely pictorial: in particular during her colour-blind months, Drexler dedicated herself even more to her passion for classical music and opera, exploring Kandinsky’s intuition that music could be visual transposed in abstract painting. In the same way that we imagine notes being able to float into the air, so do these abstract shapes that wave and circle on the canvas as if in a sensual, floating motion.
She was particularly fond of grandiose, 19th century composers such as Richard Wagner, and during her years in New York she was an assiduous opera goer – she used to take a sketchbook with her, in order to draw the sensations the music inspired. All of her paintings from the 1970s are strongly affected by this interest in music. The repetitive layers of vivid colours that Drexler put on canvas, when seen in this light, challenge the perception of chromatic and aural interplay in a very novel manner.
If it comes as a surprise that such an interesting artist is not more commonly known, the reason is anything but surprising. Drexler was a very talented abstract expressionist who married a more famous painter, John Hultberg, and nursed him through his bouts of alcoholism, while trying to nurse herself out of the pain of his infidelities and abusive temper. After struggling in New York, the couple moved to Monhegan, an island off the coast of Maine, to look for an elusive calmer life. Drexler remained on the island even after they separated. If that reminds you of Lee Krasner (married to the highly abusive Jackson Pollock) or Elaine de Kooning (who married Willem de Kooning in spite of his alcohol issues, which she eventually also suffered from herself), it is because this is a common story, in this artistic movement as in many others. And like Krasner, De Kooning and many other female artists, Drexler’s work is now being given the visibility it always deserved. During her lifetime, she only had one major solo exhibition, in 1961, at the legendary Tanager Gallery (1952-62), one of the co-op galleries of New York’s 10th Street collective.
Luckily for us, chances to see her work on display are now only likely to become more numerous.
HOFA Gallery, in partnership with PhillipsX and Hivemind Capital Partners, presents a landmark new group exhibition spotlighting 32 of the world’s leading digital artists. Running from 16–22 May 2025 at Phillips London, the exhibition showcases the winners and finalists of the inaugural Digital Art Awards and follows the awards ceremony on 15 May.
Curated across four categories — Still Image, Moving Image, Experiential and Innovation — the public show features 32 artworks exploring the full spectrum of contemporary digital practice, from generative systems and AI to immersive installations, robotics and data-led works, representing a bold, genre-defying snapshot of digital art at its most visionary.
A collaboration between internationally acclaimed media artist Refik Anadol and the Yawanawá Indigenous community of Brazil, Winds of Yawanawá, is a standout highlight of the exhibition. The experiential category work draws on environmental data from the Amazon rainforest, transformed through AI into a digital artwork shaped by the visual traditions of Yawanawá artists Nawashahu and Mukashahu. The piece honours the Yawanawá’s deep connection to nature, bridging ancestral wisdom and cutting-edge technology.
Talking about the work and the Digital Art Awards, Refik Anadol says: “It’s a deep honor for me to collaborate with Chief Nixiwaka and Putanny, who are my mentors and teachers. They have guided my team and me in creating one of the most significant pieces of AI artwork in history. I hold great love and respect for Yawanawa culture, and I hope this project serves as a positive example for humanity, reminding us that a bright future is rooted in ancestral wisdom. We are honoured to be selected for these awards.”
Other Exhibition Highlights Include
Still Image Category
Emily Xie — algorithmic compositions inspired by textile traditions and architectural forms.
Kevin Abosh — conceptual works exploring identity and value in digital and physical media.
Moving Image
Six n Five — a decentralised AI artist governed by a global community, challenging notions of authorship and creative agency.
Niceaunties — emotionally charged AI-generated videos reflecting on memory, womanhood and everyday life.
Experiential
Operator — immersive installations blending performance, surveillance and spatial interaction.
Sasha Stiles — AI poetry across page and space, merging human language and machine logic.
Innovation
Damien Bénéteau — kinetic light sculptures transforming digital logic into meditative, optical form.
Cem Sonel & Ramazan Can — a collaborative practice merging generative systems and Anatolian heritage to explore identity, perception and cultural memory through interactive digital art.
Each of the four category winners will receive a $10,000 USDC commission from the Digital Award’s backers Hivemind Capital Partners, supporting the development of a new work, which will be exhibited as part of HOFA Gallery’s future programming in contemporary and digital art. The Awards are designed not only to recognise exceptional achievement but also to provide meaningful momentum, offering long-term opportunities for artists in the digital space.
The Digital Art Awards are proudly backed by Hivemind Capital Partners’ Digital Culture Fund. Hivemind is committed to championing established digital artists while nurturing emerging talent and building a sustainable economic foundation for the flourishing digital art ecosystem. Other partners include ApeChain, a global platform for the next generation of creators and culture shakers, and global crypto bank Amina.
After he was appointed as Hong Kong’s Ambassador for Cultural Promotion in 2024 for a term of five years, renowned Chinese artist Xu Bing’s first commissioned art initiative, Xu Bing in Hong Kong: Square Word Calligraphy, can be seen at locations around Hong Kong. His exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA), Eying East, Wondering West – Square Word Calligraphy Classroom, has converted the museum’s ground-floor annex into a classroom where the audience can learn about and practise Square Word Calligraphy, a unique form of writing he developed that transforms English into a visual style strongly resembling Chinese characters.
Newly emblazoned on the museum’s exterior glass canopy using Xu’s Square Words are the museum name and the text: “Connect Art to People”. Expressing both the museum’s mission and Xu’s belief “in making art accessible to everyone”, this new display demonstrates the contrast between traditional Chinese calligraphic forms and the English alphabet to become an old-new, east-west, cross-cultural blend.
Courtesy the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
Taking Xu’s art outside the museum to the public, his calligraphy is now exhibited to passengers at Admiralty, Exhibition Centre and Wan Chai MTR stations, with newly decorated pillars at concourses feature each station’s name in Xu’s Square Word Calligraphy. The idiom “long time no see” is prominently displayed using Square Words on the Kennedy Town-bound platform screens of Sheung Wan MTR station. This phrase is uniquely used in both Chinese and English. It is said that the English idiom may have derived from a 19th-century expression used by Cantonese speakers.
Courtesy the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
This idiom joins other commonly used Hong Kong proverbs, phrases and cultural terms – many borrowed from English – in a Hong Kong edition of the textbook. Designed to resemble the exercise books used by local students, this new textbook especially developed for the Hong Kong exhibition aims to offer a sense of familiarity to the audience. Xu explains that, “For [this] inaugural art project, I introduced Square Word Calligraphy to Hong Kong, a place where East meets West, infusing it with elements of local culture.” While appreciating and learning Square Words, the audience can explore Hong Kong’s linguistic diversity and rich culture by uncovering the local expressions and cultural terms. These include shared idioms and English words adopted into Cantonese, such as “baa si” (for bus) and “do si” (for toast); and common “Konglish” terms now universally adopted and used in English, such as “milk tea” and “yum cha”.
Xu studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and his interest in written text can be seen in his monumental Book from the Sky, a four-year project (circa 1987-91) to carve over 4,000 characters, the number required to read a common Chinese publication, in movable wood letterpress type. Each unique character was invented and is completely meaningless, despite looking similar to Chinese text in form. Printed in ink on paper as four books in an edition of 120, of which the HKMoA has one, Book from the Sky has been exhibited to the public as an impressive installation of a book displayed with the text fully visible, with side-wall and hanging printed ceiling scrolls.
In the early 1990s, Xu was invited to the US by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Experiencing an unfamiliar culture and challenged by living in a new country and its language, and believing that writing “was the essence of culture”, he developed his new form of calligraphy, combining the Chinese written form with the English alphabet. Eventually, he organised the 26 letters of the English alphabet to resemble the radicals of Chinese characters, arranged in a “Square Word” format according to the Chinese writing method: from left to right, top to bottom and outside to inside.
Xu first transformed an exhibition space into an interactive classroom to promote his newly developed calligraphy in 1994. Exhibited worldwide and now at the HKMoA, his installation Square Word Calligraphy Classroom is an immersive experience allowing the audience to learn, practise and write Square Word Calligraphy. The classroom is set up with a traditional blackboard, desks and chairs, writing tools and copybooks. Participants from different cultural backgrounds can experience the pleasure of holding a brush and rendering brushstrokes in water while appreciating the beauty of traditional Chinese calligraphy.
Courtesy the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
After understanding the writing principles of Square Word Calligraphy, the audience can themselves conceptualise and design new Square Words using a digital interactive installation, filling in the sentence “Connect Art to…”. The audience can then download their own designs by using a QR code.
There has long been a tradition of bilingual education in Hong Kong. The city’s students are taught in English and/or Chinese and have well-developed writing skills in both languages. Despite this knowledge, Square Word Calligraphy can still provide a cross-cultural and progressive experience to encourage reflection on language, culture and creativity when switching between languages. When introducing the unfamiliar Chinese calligraphic traditions to a western audience, Square Word Calligraphy also presents more: a new conceptual language. Hong Kong audiences may be a step ahead by already having some ink and brushstroke skills, but the rendering of English as a Square Word, as if it were Chinese, is also an entirely new conceptual language that challenges their experience of traditional Chinese words and calligraphy.
Courtesy the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
Xu’s Square Word Calligraphy highlights the interplay between the Chinese and English languages and eastern and western cultures. His combining of the writing of the two written languages also reflects Hong Kong’s own vibrant cross-cultural and historical depth, and its unique intersection of east and west.
為配合展覽，藝術館的玻璃外牆亦煥然一新，換上以英文方塊字書寫的館名及字句「Connect Art to People」（讓藝術連結生活）。這不僅是藝術館的使命，也呼應了徐冰相信藝術應該普及大眾的理念。未進入展廳，觀眾已經能夠先體會傳統書法與英文字母兩套截然不同的書寫系統，如何交匯融合並帶來貫通古今、跨越東西方的文化交流。
徐冰的作品更走出展廳，步入日常生活。大家可於港鐵金鐘站、會展站及灣仔站大堂一睹他以英文方塊字寫成的車站名字，而上環站往堅尼地城方向的月台幕門則展示了以方塊字寫成的「Long Time No See」（很久不見）。這句問候語現在已成為中英文使用者都熟知的通用語句，更有說法指它可能是源於十九世紀某一群粵語使用人士衍生而成英文的常用語。
In 1976, the Hong Kong Museum of Art held an exhibition called The World of Douglas Bland. Nigel Cameron, the South China Morning Post’s respected art critic, gave the show a stellar review. He praised Bland’s “astonishing energy”, “emotional intensity”, profoundly imaginative quality” and “great estuarine areas of lucid paint”. He believed that Bland had finally discovered what he wanted to do with paint in 1971 and he particularly referred to his “great” Reflections series, in which he was “trying to compose forms which contain ideas about places and things reflected in spaces”. Cameron, who could be annihilating in his opinions, described Bland as “the most accomplished western painter to work in the Orient since George Chinnery died in Macau”.
By then, Bland himself was dead: he’d never regained consciousness after stomach surgery the previous year, at the age of 52. For almost three decades, he’d been striving to express his artistic response to China – its landscape, its culture, its mystic energies. He’d found inspiration in Chinese seals, calligraphy and, ultimately, oracle bones. He was determined to fuse west with east and, unusually for the colonial era, he’d shown his work alongside such Hong Kong artists as Lui Shou-kwan and Kwong Yeu Ting. Nowadays, critics might call that cultural appropriation but then it was more of a mutually beneficial mind-meld for all concerned. At the time, Chinese artists were influenced by western painting. Bland wanted to travel in the opposite direction.
He pursued his task with a concentration so intense, it became a form of meditation. He exhibited frequently. He was commissioned for prestigious projects and purchased by such collectors as Peggy Guggenheim, Hong Kong’s movie mogul Run Run Shaw and Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec. When he died, the prevailing sense was that he had been unjustly snatched away just as he was approaching his prime. For the Hong Kong Museum of Art to dedicate a solo show to his memory within a year is evidence of how highly Bland, now almost forgotten, was once regarded.
The desire to create had been present since at least his early teens. In Hong Kong interviews, he liked to give the impression he was Irish by birth and had studied at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. Neither claim was true (and he wouldn’t be the first person to exercise artistic licence with his background in a far-flung colony). In fact, he’d been born in Derbyshire, England in 1923 and had grown up in Sheffield in a working-class household. He’d studied art at a local college, then progressed to designing windows for a local department store.
When the Second World War began in 1939, he was just 16. By the time he was 20, he’d been called up and, having been identified as officer-class material and finished his training in South Africa, he’d become a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. On two occasions, he was on board ships that were sunk beneath him. Years later, he needed surgery in Hong Kong to have shrapnel removed from his shoulder. In a different man, being twice torpedoed might have left a horror of the sea but all his life Bland loved being on or near water.
After the war, he was demobbed in Southeast Asia, spent some time in Bali and then, in May 1947, according to its archived lists of former British staff, joined the Chinese Maritime Customs Service as acting first officer. The work had its own dangers – there were various adventures involving pirates – but as a cartographer, he had unparalleled access to China’s waterways. He always said observing and then charting those sinuous paths made him an artist.
It was also preparation for a life in which art and a salaried job would have to flow in parallel. In 1948, he joined the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company; by the following year, he was exhibiting 44 watercolours and oil paintings in the Hong Kong government’s Public Relations Office in Statue Square. According to the South China Morning Post, he was the only British painter to hold one-man shows in the postwar colony. Those early titles (The Erecting of the Government Flats, View of Tai Tam, Wong Nei Chong Gap) suggest a newly arrived observer. The newspaper’s reviewer thought Bland’s need for self-expression hadn’t yet the “complex urgency of a man who has found his very own medium”.
Yet an urgency seized him. Bland was then 26 and, although he didn’t know it, he’d already lived half his life. Later, some people wondered if he’d anticipated the sudden scythe and that was why he relentlessly juggled Wharf and art. He could be ruthless about destroying his creations but he worked on several canvases at a time and, despite the lack of ideal exhibition space in Hong Kong, there were always regular shows. He was brave enough, or driven enough, to present his experimental output continually in public. One critic in 1955 described his work as “very likeable … if a little sugary”; by 1957, he’d executed 17 black-and-white illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol that appeared, somewhat unpredictably, in Elixir, the journal of the Hong Kong University Medical Society, and later in a limited-edition book. Their anguished forcefulness evokes Francis Bacon, while one upside-down nude male anticipates the German painter Georg Baselitz, who would not begin painting his upside-down figures until 1969.
It was the abstract, however, that came to fascinate him. In 1958, Bland met the Chinese painter Zao Wou-Ki, who had moved to France in 1948 and a decade later was a visiting professor at the School of Fine Arts in New Asia College, now part of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Zao, who was teaching western oil painting, exemplified the artistic combination of east and west. Bland was his mirror image. “We found we were thinking along the same lines,” Bland said later of their encounter. “We both had an appreciation of ancient Chinese painting and the marvellous expression of space that you often find in it. We were both conscious that this tradition was lost and felt, in rather a romantic way, that the spirit of it should be revived using the western medium of oil paint.”
It was the turning-point of his artistic life. He had never studied calligraphy but he was familiar with Chinese seals from his days in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and he could create abstract designs and collages based on Chinese ideograms. Raymond Tang Man-leung, deputy director of The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s art museum, says, “In the 1960s Douglas, as someone who devoted himself to abstract painting and the style of abstract expressionism, was … a pioneer for a younger generation who knew him or had a close relationship with his circle – artists like Wucius Wong, Hon Chi-fun and even, later, Irene Chou. It was a very small circle but it was important.”
Petra Hinterthür, in her 1985 book Modern Art in Hong Kong, also classifiesBland as a pioneer. He’s the only westerner she lists as tackling new artistic frontiers in the city’s post-war era. Along with ink painter Lui Shou-kwan and Kuang Yaoding, who’d trained as a landscape architect, he became a founding member of the Society of Hong Kong Artists.
In the early 1960s, the Hong Kong Hilton hotel asked him to do a series of large murals – 2m high and 10m long – that would dominate its lobby when it opened in 1963. It was a prestigious commission at a time when high-end hotels were suddenly blooming in the city. Bland decided that his theme would be the rivers of China but, perhaps in the spirit of east-meets-west, the water that inspired him to work was in Italy, in a rented house on the shores of Lake Maggiore. His position at Wharf had its marine advantages: Douglas, his wife Ronnie and their three children Siobhan, Diarmuid and Clodagh (all aged under 10), plus the family car, travelled over on a Lloyd Triestino liner. Then they sailed back to Hong Kong with the huge, completed panels.
The venture was such a success that, with the help of the generous Hilton fee, Bland bought an old farmhouse in Italy’s Veneto region. There he built a studio for his annual summer leaves. The rest of the year, creativity had to be squeezed into a smaller space at home in Kowloon, and it was strictly timetabled: Bland’s life at Wharf, where he eventually became commercial manager, was demanding. What his children remember now is the self-discipline. Every day, unless there were inescapable social obligations, he returned from the office, changed into what Diarmuid calls “his paint-splattered kit”, had a cup of tea, then went to his studio, which was a converted bedroom. (The girls shared another bedroom and Diarmuid slept in the TV room.) There he worked for several hours before dinner. His artistic practice pervaded all their lives. The Bland family dined later than other expatriate families; their father wore his painting kit at the table; and, upstairs, their house always smelt of oil paint. “He was just our dad and that was what he did,” says Siobhan. “Other kids’ dads went and played golf. He painted.”
Reflections 9 by Douglas Bland, Acrylic on canvas, 95 x 135 cm, 1972. Private collection. Photo: Studio8ight.
At the Italian farmhouse, he was less frenzied. “When he was spending summers in Italy, he had all the time in the world to paint,” says Siobhan. “But he didn’t paint any more than when he was working. Sometimes we used to think he needed the pressure of work to have that need to release it by painting.” He represented Hong Kong in Saigon’s first international art salon in 1962 (winning a bronze medal) and in a 1963 exhibition of Commonwealth art in London and Edinburgh. He exhibited in New York, England and Brazil. Still, he strove for more. He liked to quote the 11th-century Chinese painter Guo Xi, who thought that “a poem is a painting without forms and that a painting is a poem with forms”. His body of work made a cartographer of the viewer too: it was possible to map the influences in his prolific artistic life through to the final depths of the Reflections series.
After his death, the Hong Kong Museum of Art held its 1976 tribute show. In 1979, there was an exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre of 87 Bland works that the family had either kept in storage or discovered in the Italian farmhouse and decided to sell. Since then, there has been nothing. In 1995, the Hong Kong Hilton was demolished and the fate of the huge riverine murals is unknown. Much of his other work has disappeared. His paintings held by the Hong Kong Museum of Art have never gone back on display.
Tang, who first heard of Bland when he was a researcher at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in the 1990s, says he is not popular among collectors. “Irene Chou, Hon Chi-fun and Cheung Yee are still remembered because the galleries think they have good market value and so they continue promoting them. But who will do that for Douglas?” His exhibitions were covered in Hong Kong’s English-language press but many of those readers who bought his work have long since left the city; and Tang hasn’t found a single reference to Bland in the Chinese newspapers of the time. His influence was significant but it was limited; it did not extend to the next generation of artists, who, as Tang remarks, would not have been museum-goers. And so his formative place in history, like those of old underground tributaries that once flowed through major cities, has – almost – been lost.
Ariel by Douglas Bland, Oil on canvas, 172 x 162 cm, 1972. Private collection. Photo: Studio8ight.
Petra Hinterthür在她1985年出版的《香港現代藝術》（Modern Art in Hong Kong）一書中也將布蘭德歸類為先鋒藝術家。她所列出的在戰後香港探索新藝術前沿的人中，他是唯一的西方人。他與水墨畫家呂壽琨以及曾接受景觀設計師培訓的鄺耀鼎一同，成為香港藝術家協會（Society of Hong Kong Artists）的創始成員。
London-based artist, activist and Chinese drag king Whiskey Chow’s practice defies conventional boundaries, spanning performance, moving image, digital art, sculpture and experimental print to challenge established narratives around gender, masculinity and Asian identity. Through their multifaceted approach as an artivist – an artist with the heart of an activist – Chow creates work that interrogates systemic inequalities while carving out spaces for marginalised voices, particularly within the Chinese and other Asian diaspora communities and beyond.
Drawing from their early experiences in feminist and LGBTQ activism in China, including organising groundbreaking events like For Vaginas’ Sake (將陰道獨白到底, 2013) and the first Chinese LGBTQ music festival, Lover Comrades Concert (愛人同志音樂會), Chow’s work offers a distinctive non-western perspective within western contexts. Their work you must everywhere wander (你必顧盼, 2021) in the exhibition On Queer Ground at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and performances at renowned institutions like the Tate Modern and V&A demonstrate the growing recognition of their unique artistic vision.
Whiskey Chow during her residency at Studio Voltaire Open House, London, 2024. Courtesy the artist.
Jessica Wan: Your journey from organising feminist and LGBTQ events in China to your current artistic practice in London spans multiple forms of expression. How did this evolution shape your understanding of art as a tool for social change? Whiskey Chow: At the core of my practice is my artivist heart and lens – I strive to create space for marginalised communities, challenge power structures and empower audiences. My work presents provocative questions, makes the invisible visible and seeks to change the world through art.
My practice is context-sensitive, evolving with the sociopolitical environments I navigate. In China, my work responded to gender norms and homophobia within society at the time. In the UK, my Asian and migrant identity became a significant part of my intersectional experience, shaping my everyday observations and artistic responses as an othered body.
However, my work extends beyond personal experience – I use it to expose and challenge systemic inequalities, offering multiple entry points for engagement while placing radical care at the centre.
JW: As a drag king performer, how does your approach to masculinity differ when performing in western versus Asian contexts? How do audiences’ reactions vary? WC: I began my drag performance in 2016, just six months after moving to the UK. At the time, no one was referencing Cantonese opera in drag king performances. As a young Asian queer artist, having researched western drag history, I asked myself: how could I make my work relevant to my identity and cultural background?
Cantonese opera emerged naturally as an influence, offering a different aesthetic compared to the dominant western depictions of theatrical masculinity, from its colour palette and facial contouring to its ideals of masculinity. The king I embodied was unconventional by western drag standards – a pink-cheeked, soft-featured figure performing a dumpling-making act, slicing my fake beard and mixing it into the filling.
Rather than simply being a persona, I see this king as a radical embodiment and a decolonial gesture, challenging the definition of “drag king”. Some audiences didn’t know how to react; they had never seen anything like it before. One person awkwardly returned the beard dumpling I had handed out, saying, “I think I’d better give it back. I can’t eat it but I don’t want to throw it away.” This unexpected response mirrored my practice: combining consumable elements (food, cultural products) to create something that ultimately resists consumption, much like my position as an Asian queer artist in the west.
Although I’ve performed less frequently in Asia, in 2018 I presented M.A.C.H.O in Suzhou, a one-hour performance exploring racial hierarchy, masculinity and desirability politics within the gay community. I performed with 15 moustached balloons attached to my white shirt, stepping on 60kg of white button mushrooms, while blowing up three masculine inflatable dolls – hairy-chested, eerily smiling, with black hair, blue eyes but no genitals. I stood on the mushrooms, then squeezed the dolls, forcing the air out and leaving their deflated bodies collapsed on the mushrooms. Finally, I removed my white shirt, which remained suspended in the air, held up by the attached moustached balloons, creating a sculptural residue inside the museum space.
The audience reactions were strikingly different between Suzhou and London. In London, audiences came and went freely; a gay man from Hong Kong later told me how deeply he resonated with the piece. In Suzhou, the audience stood watching intently for the entire hour, carefully documenting the residue on their phones yet rarely engaging in immediate discussion.
Since my work is context-sensitive, I look forward to spending more time in Asia, creating performances shaped by my experiences and observation, while forging deeper connections with local audiences.
Whiskey Chow, Video projection. Courtesy the artist.
JW: Tell us more about your current residency at Studio Voltaire. How did you begin the residency and what have you been working on? WC: I began my residency at Studio Voltaire in November 2023, and I’ve felt fully supported and nourished by both the artist community and staff. In high-rent cities like London and New York, an artist studio with integrity like this is rare. The SV team deeply respect artists, recognising that professional development needs vary, and they offer insightful, tailored support, from one-on-one consultations to small-group workshops.
Resident artists are at different career stages and not everyone works as a full-time artist due to financial realities. SV understands this and remains flexible. The community also organises social gatherings around Christmas and Easter, as well as workshops on topics like art insurance, art law and access rider development. We support, celebrate and grow together.
SV’s robust exhibition programme, Open Studios, and international artist residency ensure that resident artists remain actively connected to the broader art world.
For my own project, I am developing a silicone version of Phoenix Chow – a queer hero I embody, inspired by Bruce Lee, Tom of Finland and UK LGBT history. Last year, I created a stainless steel Phoenix Chow sculpture alongside a CGI animation. This year, my focus is on silicone casting, experimenting with scale, and exploring the tension between soft and hard materiality, continuing to queer mainstream heroism and interrogate impenetrable masculinity.
JW: Through Queering Now 酷兒鬧, you’ve created a platform for queer Chinese and other Asian diaspora voices. What gaps in the current art landscape did you aim to address with this initiative? WC: My initial drive was to create something I longed for but couldn’t find. In 2019, after a few years of practising as an artist, I saw how marginalised identities were consumed by the western art world, with culturally specific nuances often lost in translation.
I wanted to build a space beyond the institutional and white gaze – where Chinese/Asian queer diaspora artists were supported by curators who truly understood their cultural context; where artists didn’t have to perform their identity to meet diversity requirements; where exhibited works could generate dialogue and enable intergenerational conversations. I wanted to support my peers in the way I wished to be supported. When I finally launched Queering Now酷兒鬧 in 2020 in London, the ecstatic Asian queer crowd and the feedback from participating artists confirmed its relevance and its essential role in the community.
Today, Queering Now酷兒鬧 continues to leave a lasting impact by inspiring new queer Asian programmes, collectives, platforms and events. Many have been initiated by individuals who once worked with, exhibited in or followed Queering Now酷兒鬧.
Radical and grassroots, yet maintaining high artistic quality, Queering Now酷兒鬧has cultivated a global community, amplified further by its digital edition in 2021. As my research continues, I hope to expand Queering Now酷兒鬧 through international residencies and fellowships, curating new editions worldwide and celebrating the Chinese/Asian queer diaspora across different cultural landscapes.
Whiskey Chow, Video projection. Courtesy the artist.
JW: Your work has been shown at institutions like the Tate Modern, V&A and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. How do you see your practice evolving, particularly in relation to institutional spaces? WC: Over the past eight years, I’ve performed and showcased my work twice at the V&A and three times at the Tate. I believe it’s vital for audiences to see diverse representations in major institutions, especially work by artists from less privileged backgrounds. To see and to be seen hold equal significance – our lived experiences are embedded in our work and institutions act as bridges, fostering dialogue and connecting our realities. Sometimes, they allow work to reach unexpected audiences – those who need it most. Art can offer them a space for being held and understood. This is the power of institutions and the magic that occurs when they centre marginalised voices.
From a professional standpoint, institutional recognition can open doors to greater exposure. For instance, after my work you must everywhere wander was shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2022, it was exhibited at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York in 2023. However, beyond visibility and recognition, what matters most to me is the critical friendships I’ve built with curators and fellow artists along the way. More importantly, it’s about how my work – on these major stages – can shift perspectives and spark meaningful conversations that inspire both others and myself.
Purely Beautiful New Era by Whiskey Chow, CGI Animation installation and live performance. Photo: Amber Yi Zheng. Courtesy the artist.
JW: As someone working at the intersection of performance, activism and education, what future possibilities do you envision for artist-activists working in diaspora communities? WC: We live in a chaotic world filled with uncertainty and crisis. Arts funding is shrinking and many artists are struggling with the rising cost of living. GoFundMe campaigns are everywhere – those who can vocalise their precarity often receive community support but what about those equally in need yet less skilled in initiating digital advocacy?
A radical redistribution of power and resources is crucial. For artists, activists and the diaspora community, hope remains. There is still the possibility to build a new ecosystem – one where mutual care is the norm and essential needs like housing and visas are actively supported.
Queering Now 酷兒鬧 is my way of reimagining the world. Being a tutor at a top art school [the Royal College of Art] allows me to facilitate meaningful change. My performances and artworks are my way to call for a radical future. I remain open – to all who dream of making the world better in their own way. And I hope my journey serves as a reminder that power lies within us and those willing to join the revolution – both within themselves and in the world – can create real change.
