Three contrasting art exhibitions grapple with the big issues facing Hong Kong today
- Group exhibition at WMA Space chronicles Hongkongers’ daily lives, as two artists with very different styles tackle sociopolitical issues at Para Site art space
- Installations range from reflections on disease and death to the control of personal data use to our relationship with nature and our surroundings
Artists around the world have spent the past year in varying degrees of isolation, with plenty of time to reflect on disease, death and universal questions such as the relinquishing of control and personal data, and our relationship with nature.
On top of all that, artists in Hong Kong also have to contend with a home that is undergoing transformation, and whose deep wounds from the street protests of 2019 have yet to heal.
That much is evident in a number of art exhibitions in Hong Kong.
“Can’t Touch This!”, a group exhibition at WMA Space facilitated by artist Angela Su Sai-kee, started out as a book project by writer Chloe Lai Wing-sze, founder of book-sharing space Nose in the Books. Lai has a book project called “Faces under Masks”, which documents the daily lives of Hong Kong people during the pandemic, and three artists were asked to respond to these stories.
Siu Wai Hang’s Hot Shots (2021) is a miniature cemetery in glorious technicolour. Dozens of headshots taken with a thermal camera – like the ones that have become ubiquitous in public areas – are mounted and arranged in neat rows, each face disfigured and made skeletal.
