All posts filed under: Reviews

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien

Offerings for Escalante / Para Site / Hong Kong / Oct 21, 2023 – Feb 8, 2024 / Negros is a large island located in the Visayas, in the central part of the Philippines, with a population of about 4.7 million. Since the mid 19th century, it has relied on the production of sugarcane, a crop that quickly became one of the Philippines’ most important export goods. During the first Marcos government (1965-86), sugar was very lucrative, yet its profits were mainly kept by political cronies and landlords, and did not benefit local workers. From the early 1980s, a drop in raw sugar prices resulted in dramatic famines, child malnutrition, unemployment and a significant rise in poverty on the island. On 20 September 1985, not only sugarcane farmers but also fishermen, students and all types of unaffiliated workers joined a nationwide protest asking for wage increases, better living conditions, human rights and a demilitarisation of the territory. The local militia replied with guns and violence. Twenty people were killed. Known as the “Escalante massacre”, this event …

Frank Walter

Published by Brady Ng

Pastorale / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Sep 14 – Oct 28, 2023 / When Frank Walter was born in Antigua in 1926, the British had freed slaves on the island roughly 90 years before. Yet the wounds of humans owning humans had merely been scabbed over; the aches were persistent. Children and grandchildren of former slaves were part of a system of labour that still rhymed with the treatment of their forebears. Case in point: 22 years later, Walter was the first black man to become a manager at the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate. He wanted to improve the industry and give his fellow Antiguans fair pay and better working conditions. It was not a smooth path, but Walter did everything he could to make his homeland a better place, including tolerating the bigotry of racial prejudice in England, Scotland and Germany when he sought to learn new ways to farm. It’s easy to imagine that, upon returning to Antigua, Walter’s act of putting that knowledge into practice picked at those wounds. How do …

Welcome >_< Take a Seat Wherever (cringevibing on a downward spiral)歡迎光臨矛盾漩渦 >_<

Published by Artomity Magazine

Various artists / Tomorrow Maybe at Eaton / Hong Kong / Aug 13 – Sept 3, 2023 / Ilaria Maria Sala / As you enter the exhibition space on the fourth floor of the Eaton Hotel, you are greeted by a small print of an image macro, a digital picture with text superimposed, hanging from the roof, attached with string and clips. It features an image of a manga girl sitting on a messy bed with her legs bent against her chest, provocatively showing the back of her upper thighs, left uncovered by her pink miniskirt – coordinating with her pink baby shoes – her mouth hiding behind a mobile phone. The floor is strewn with all sorts of items: shopping bags and takeaway containers, bits of paper and other undecipherable debris. On top is the sentence that gives the show part of its title: “Welcome >_< take a seat wherever” (not that there is anywhere to sit in this rubbish-piled room). Internet neologisms, and neologisms from internet neologisms – like the cringevibing of the show’s title – …

Michael Ho, Chris Huen Sin Kan, Timothy Lai, Su Yu-Xin

Published by Artomity Magazine

Inside the White Cube: New Moroism / White Cube / Hong Kong / May 31 – Sep 9, 2023 / By Christina Ko / Blurred lines are very much the theme at White Cube’s summer exhibition, Inside the White Cube: New Moroism. In the literal sense, it refers to the Moroism movement, which emerged in Japan in the 19th century and saw stark outlines replaced by vague or hazy delineations of spatial boundaries. In a more abstract sense, these blurred lines are cultural ones: the four artists contributing to the show are of Asian descent, but no longer live or have never lived in their respective ethnic homelands, and pay homage to their heritage through their work. As such, the painting-dominant show is both romantic and restrained, filled with imagination and longing through an exploration of the concept of home, as embodied in each artist’s practice. The gallery’s lower floor features three works by London-based Michael Ho, who was raised in a small town in the Netherlands, a so-called third-culture kid whose childhood was and …

Szelit Cheung and Olga Grotova

Published by Brady Ng

Door to Door / The Shophouse / Hong Kong / Jul 15– Aug 13, 2023 / Doors open memories. Portals from our past are linked to significant locations or major milestones – the entrance to our childhood home or the gate leading into a campus where we embarked on intellectual explorations, for instance. When we think about important moments that we’ve experienced, those journeys can be traced through doors too, each entryway a marker for consequential junctures in our lives. For its summer show, Tai Hang’s The Shophouse organised a four-week artist residency and open studio programme that led up to a month-long exhibition, Door to Door. The two artists involved were Hong Kong painter Szelit Cheung and London-based Russian artist Olga Grotova, who created new artworks that drew from The Shophouse’s architectural heritage and, more broadly, the city in which the gallery is situated. In Cheung’s section of the presentation, Door I (all works 2023) showed four rotating panels opening up to let beams of natural light into a muted blue space, the rays …

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Published by Christie Lee

The Shop / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Mar 20 – May 6 / Stepping out of the elevator at David Zwirner Hong Kong, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the wrong location. What lies before you is an old-fashioned umbrella shop – the kind more commonly seen at street level in Hong Kong. The shop is stuffed to the gills with brollies, Chinese lanterns, manuals, books, a replica of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It’s a delight to peruse. All items are for sale. Is the installation a commentary on the idea of art? An attempt to elevate the umbrella from a banal, everyday object to art by situating it in a different setting? Its creator, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, has said that Duchamp’s Fountain is his favourite art piece. Tiravanija is a master at using everyday experiences such as eating and playing to shed light on how the personal is also the political, and how art is a part of the everyday. He is perhaps best known for exhibitions involving …

Postmodern Tales

Published by Christine Chan Chiu

HART / Hong Kong / Mar 20 – Apr 29, 2023 / Showcasing the latest works from HART’s artists-in-residence, Postmodern Tales was a multimedia group show featuring eight different artists whose practices are as thought-provoking as they are diverse. From various cultural backgrounds, they are connected via their unique contemporary sensibilities, as well as their willingness to approach art using novel ideas – or to present novel ideas using art. As HART’s second off-site exhibition, curated by HART director Vera Lam, the presentation not only captured what it means to be postmodern, but also served to cement the non-profit organisation’s commitment to nurturing Hong Kong talent. Visitors were greeted with Body as Lifeguard Tower I (2022), a hanging, life-sized cyanotype fabric work by Michele Chu. Imprinted with silhouettes of her own body, the work is a metaphor for emotional barriers, and aims to break down invisible walls by acknowledging their existence. In Replica of Ruins: Anonymous Road (2023), Natalie Chu Lok Ting invites visitors to step back in time. Her recreation of a pathway in …

Shubigi Rao 舒比吉·拉奧

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Eating One’s Tail / Rossi & Rossi / Hong Kong / Mar 18 – May 13, 2023 / Eating One’s Tail, the title of Shubigi Rao exhibition at Rossi & Rossi, conjures up an image of a self-ingesting creature. As a metaphor, it questions human beings’ tendency to destroy, transform and reappropriate their own creations – and, more generally, it suggests the limits of self-reference. Rao’s artistic practice, in contrast, is an invitation to discover and experiment with multiple ways to inhabit and connect to the world. More subtly, perhaps, the title humorously evokes the artist’s attempt to reflect on her own practice and her claim to subjectivity. As this is her first exhibition in Hong Kong, the whole scope of her practice is presented, with selected artworks from different series. This eclecticism appropriately reflects Rao’s multidisciplinary, encyclopedic working process, which aims to resist any kind of linear, authoritarian mode of thinking. Dead Duck (2013) is the first artwork that attracts the attention when entering the gallery. The large ink drawing features a hanging …

Bouie Choi 蔡鈺娟

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Crossing the nights Filling the lines / Grotto SKW / Mar 8 – Apr 1, 2023 / With what she calls her “emotional landscapes”, Bouie Choi continues to portray Hong Kong as a city on fire, undergoing perpetual mutation. Large, watery flows of paint merge with finer architectural elements in dynamic, poetic compositions where human beings seem lost: in the shape of either tiny figures or giants, they keep searching for their place in a reality that has clearly outgrown them. Despite its apocalyptic atmosphere and the many clouds that threaten the city, the artist’s new solo exhibition at Grotto Fine Arts is not about despair; on the contrary, an extraordinary vitality arises from each painting. A time of change and uncertainty is also a time for potential regeneration. Walking inside the exhibition space involves walking into darkness. The night seems to be total, just like during the blackout that happened in the western New Territories in June 2022. At that time, Bouie Choi was commuting back home, and was trapped in sudden obscurity. She …

Vaevae Chan

Published by Brady Ng

She Told Me to Head to the Sea @ Juen Juen Gung / Hong Kong / Ceramist Vaevae Chan has built a private cave. Located within a nondescript industrial building in Sun Po Kong, Kowloon, the space is where Chan retreated while contending with health problems, a parent’s death and upheaval in Hong Kong. Between 2018 and 2021, the artist toiled in private, turning it into a studio and exhibition space. This culminated in her inaugural project, She Told Me to Head to the Sea, which was a unique experience for visitors. For a time, Juen Juen Gung, as Chan calls her space, was shrouded in mystery. Posts on Instagram created some buzz, but none of the images delivered the feeling that Chan aimed to instil in visitors. While descriptions of the show spread by word of mouth, little information was available. The only way to find out more was to book a slot for a visit. She Told Me to Head to the Sea can be accessed via four locked doors, with three of …