All posts tagged: Caroline Ha Thuc

Reclaiming the Hong Kong Sea 重佔香港海域

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

What has become of the sea in Hong Kong? With a coastline of 1,189 km, it ought to be everywhere, yet it seems to be hiding. At the Maritime Museum, it serves as the backdrop to the entire history of the territory. In historical paintings, we see it carrying warships, pirates, then merchant vessels. Usually, it appears as a means, a resource; rarely as a subject in its own right. Modern artists scarcely represented it – or, when they did, it was mere scenery. In Ap Lei Chau (1961) by Lui Shou-kwan, for instance, the island and the boats moored in the bay are rendered in ink, while the sea itself is utterly transparent, homogeneous and white – a void into which the boats might fall; a negative space. We find it again, subdued, in Wu Guanzhong’s Victoria Harbour (2002), barely sketched with a few fine lines and bluish strokes. In contrast, over the past decade, artists have been increasingly representing the sea, exploring its ambivalent and complex features. How do these artworks participate in …

Zheng Bo 鄭波

Published by Artomity Magazine

Recently, Zheng Bo has been using the lagoon in the French South Pacific territory of New Caledonia as a temporary studio and daily research site. Drawn there by its exceptionally clean air and status as one of the world’s largest, most biodiverse lagoons, he works through direct, low-tech immersion – swimming, observing, filming. Reflecting on what he refers to as “eco-sensibility”, the Hong Kong artist is evolving his long-standing concerns with queer ecology and social imagination into a more modest but radical aim: “learning to live on Earth” through pleasure, beauty and care. Moving between humour, anarchist thought and close observation, he asks what art can do – not to fix the ecological crisis and save nature but to transform how we perceive and relate to it. Caroline Ha Thuc: You’ve already spent several months this year in New Caledonia and now you’re back there to work. Is this a new temporary studio? What drew you there? Zheng Bo: It was quite accidental. Some time ago, I read a report by a Swiss company that …

Yip Kai Chun 葉啟俊

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

How to draw a line across the sea? /Peng Chau Cinema /Hong Kong /Nov 15 – Dec 21, 2025 / Yip Kai Chun’s solo exhibition occupies the lobby and former ticket office of the old Peng Chau Cinema, which has recently reopened to host art events. The building’s architecture is typical of the 1970s, featuring a concrete floor, broad columns and walls covered with small blue tiles reminiscent of swimming pool mosaics. The space is filled with natural light and has been thoughtfully used by Clarissa Lim, the curator, who has skilfully created a setting that resonates with Yip’s reflections on island life and his long-term experience as a resident of Peng Chau, where he has lived for the past eight years. In this new series of works, Yip invites us to share his insular gaze and to consider the surrounding landscape from his vantage point, one shaped by observing his environment from the ferry he takes every day, a routine that has profoundly influenced and transformed his relationship with geography. Scroll: Kowloon on the …

Chan Kwan Lok 陳鈞樂

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Weaving together Chinese traditional techniques, Japanese iconography and contemporary critical perspectives, the practice of Hong Kong artist Chan Kwan Lok draws on his daily experiences and observation of nature. His works depict human beings – and often himself – grappling with their environment, set against grand landscapes that both subsume and permeate them, while confronting their own emotions. The delicate ink lines facilitate the intertwining of worlds and perceptions, where elements overflow and merge. The sea, along with the forest and the mountain, provides the artist with particularly inspiring settings. CHT: Coral Reef (2013) and The Odyssey in Waves (2014) are among your first long handscrolls. Both depict the ocean. Later, one of your solo exhibitions was titled Threading Ocean. Where does this interest for the sea come from? Chan Kwan Lok: The first long scroll painting about the ocean can be traced back to my childhood work The Ocean (1999). I created it while having dim sum with my family, using pages torn from my school dictation book, drawing one page at a time …

All-Sea: 8 Oceanic Artistic Practices from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at Karin Weber Gallery

Published by Artomity Magazine

Ari Bayuaji, Charles Lim, Faris Ridzwan, Lim Sokchanlina, Joar Songcuya, Louis To, Juria Toramae, Tsang Chui Mei /All-Sea: 8 Oceanic Artistic Practices from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong /Nov 8, 2025 – Jan 17, 2026 /Opening: Saturday, Nov 8, 4pm – 8pm /Artist talk: Saturday, Nov 8, 5.30pm Caroline Ha Thuc in conversation with Joar Songcuya, Louis To Wun and Tsang Chui Mei RSVP essential at Evenbrite link (capacity 20 seats) Karin Weber GalleryG/F, 20 Aberdeen Street SoHo, Hong Kong+852 2544 5004Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 7pm karinwebergallery.com The idea of All-Sea derives from Edouard Glissant’s notion of the Tout-Monde (All-world). For the Caribbean poet and philosopher, this term designates a world defined by interconnection and perpetual transformation. Curated by Caroline Ha Thuc, this exhibition serves as an invitation to reflect upon and acknowledge the sea that surrounds us—often overlooked despite its omnipresence. How might we engage with and relate to a living sea, governed by its own dynamics and rules? Artworks presented approach this expansive vision from distinct perspectives. All-Seafeatures eight artists from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong whose works offer personal and artistic vision of the sea. The diversity of their chosen media resonates with the …

Trevor Yeung 楊沛鏗

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Courtyard of Attachments /M+ /Jun 14 – Oct 12, 2025 /Caroline Ha Thuc / Courtyard of Attachments, Trevor Yeung’s exhibition at M+, constitutes the Hong Kong iteration of the artist’s presentation for the 2025 Venice Biennale. Distributed across three rooms, one of which is devoted to video documentation, the exhibition has been reconfigured to suit the institutional context of the museum. The original installation featured four site-specific works that incorporated two distinct bodies of water: seawater outdoors and freshwater sourced from the Venice canal indoors. Central to the project is the notion of relationships explored through absence, mostly articulated through the presentation of 74 uninhabited fish tanks. At M+, this absence is intensified: not only are the fish missing but the water itself has also been removed. The exhibition thus distances visitors even further from the living ecosystems that once animated the installation. Consequently, issues such as water quality, ecological interdependence and human-aquatic relationships are displaced. Instead, questions of care and attachment are replaced by an encounter with their impossibility. The exhibition ultimately stages a …

Chak Chung 翟宗浩

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

A graduate of the Department of Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in the early 1980s, Chak Chung was deeply influenced by the renowned artist Liu Kuo-sung. Over the past four decades, he has engaged in an extensive exploration of diverse painting traditions, from Chinese landscape to modernism. Shortly after completing his undergraduate studies, Chak relocated to Tokyo to further his artistic education, subsequently moving to New York, where he resided and worked until 2009. Upon returning to Hong Kong, he established his studio in Fotan, where he continues to investigate the possibilities of painting as a medium, striving to grasp the elusive beauty and inherent chaos of the natural elements and the human condition. Caroline Ha Thuc: Most of your artworks are landscape paintings and portraits of Hong Kong. They express the pull and push between elements and are generally free from people. Chak Chung: Socialising is one of my major weaknesses. I find people’s behaviours intimidating, and interacting with strangers drains my energy. Maybe that is why I am drawn to …

Wing Po So 蘇詠寶

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Take Turns Para SiteHong KongMar 15 – May 25, 2025 Wing Po So’s new installation presents itself as a constellation of three sculptural compositions – or “islands”, as the artist refers to them – constructed from old drawers once used in traditional Chinese medicine shops. These drawers, stacked and assembled in varying configurations, give rise to angular structures that appear simultaneously orderly and illogical. Some are positioned vertically, others inverted, open or shut, interlocked with precarious balance, ultimately producing a sense of organised chaos. Within the cold, stark environment of the gallery, the installation emerges as a living enclave – warm wood tones, the subtle scent of earth or dried herbs and a nearly recognisable soundscape evoking rhythmic breaths or pulses, all contributing to a multisensory experience. So seeks to recreate the dynamic choreography characteristic of traditional Chinese pharmacies. Having grown up in her parents’ shop, she experienced the daily rituals first-hand: opening and closing drawers, climbing stools to reach higher levels, bending towards lower compartments, crushing dried plants, grinding powders and blending ingredients. In this …

Tsang Kin-Wah 曾建華

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

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 …

Michele Chu 朱凱婷

Published by Caroline Ha Thuc

Multidisciplinary artist Michele Chu explores how human bodies interact and express our deep and often hidden emotions. Through performances and interactive installations, her practice engages with the tensions and societal norms that govern the public space and our cultural customs. Delicate and subtle, her work also involves sharing parts of her own intimacy and personal memory as an invitation for viewers to journey inward and question the threads that bind us to one another and the world we inhabit. Caroline Ha Thuc: Your practice revolves around the ideas of intimacy and personal emotion. What triggered this interest? Michele Chu: My interest in intimacy dates to my graduate school, where I became aware of how many of my friends were struggling with loneliness. The juxtaposition of connection [through friendship] and isolation prompted me to question the nature of intimacy and what fosters closeness between people.  Because intimacy is so inherently human-centred, in conjunction with doing academic research, I also conducted fieldwork through street interventions with strangers. These insights directly informed the design of one of my …