Review | Shades of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator in artist Kwan Sheung-chi’s mockery of an autocratic government’s intolerance for opposing opinions
- Like Charlie Chaplin’s monologue imitating a Hitler-like leader in The Great Dictator, Kwan Sheung-chi’s video art uses parody to skewer autocratic government
- A thoughtful artist whose career has coincided with social unrest and political change in Hong Kong, Kwan’s new solo show has an absurdist theatrical vibe
In Kiang Malingue art gallery’s raw industrial unit in Tin Wan, near Aberdeen on the south side of Hong Kong Island, three rooms have been built to house Kwan Sheung-chi’s exhibition “Not Retrospective”.
In the first room, a conventional gallery space exhibits smaller mixed-media objects, photographs and videos, dating from 2003. The next room replicates a darkened interview room with table and chairs, and four new videos play in a continuous loop on the screen.
The third room is larger, fully curtained and formal, with nothing except a front-facing lectern. Handmade from cardboard, the lectern is suspended from the ceiling by wires, like a hovering spaceship.
The objects and the ambience in each room are interconnected, a holistic approach that is a hallmark of the thoughtful Kwan, whose frequent collaborator – his wife and fellow artist, Doris Wong Wai-yin – features as an actor in his new videos.
Significantly, their careers have coincided with Hong Kong’s recent decades of social unrest and political change, and their art crosses the boundaries of conceptualism, political and social inquiry.
