Hong Kong art show that’s homage to Wong Kar-wai ponders meaning of home for expat workers

In How to Be Happy Together, artists consider the human connections economic migrants make and the sense of homelessness engendered by exile

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How To Be Happy Together at the Para Site art space in Hong Kong features works that consider the human connections economic migrants make and the sense of homelessness engendered by exile. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 11:15am, 24 Dec 2024

At Hong Kong independent art space Para Site, a group exhibition called “How to Be Happy Together” pays homage to filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 movie Happy Together, in which two men from the city who are in a turbulent romance travel to Argentina, just about the furthest place from their hometown.

The film, which stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and the late Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, is only referred to in the abstract by the more than 20 artists involved in the exhibition.

The show is not a mere retelling of Wong’s movie; it suggests more authentic ways of human connection, its curator, Xiang Zairong, says.

How can we live happily together? By recognising and living with historical, social and cultural differences, he adds.

Xiang Zairong, curator of the How To Be Happy Together exhibition, at Para Site. Photo: Jonathan Wong

“Happy Together was a very influential film [to me],” Xiang says. “This show is inspired holistically by the sexually charged feeling in the film but at the same time, also by how there is something very open about the film’s meaning and the history it touches upon.”

Apart from the Hong Kong context – the film was released as China prepared to resume sovereignty over the territory after 156 years of it being a British colony – Happy Together can also be seen to reflect the sense of homelessness experienced by generations of economic migrants.