The Hong Kong Seven
Exhibition for the Fondation Louis Vuitton at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, May 22 – August 9 2009. The catalogue introduction appears below.
This is a show within a show, presenting a group of seven Hong Kong artists whose work the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création has decided to place in relation to the international contemporary art found elsewhere in this exhibition. The intent is simple: to postulate that current artistic practice in Hong Kong can be seen productively in relation to larger global trends, and vice-versa. That we have chosen to do this in the form of a show within a show is no coincidence, for what could be
more quintessentially Hong Kong than the metaphor of mediated remove predicated on ultimate inclusion? The very notion of Hong Kong as “Special Administrative Region,” at once under the same sovereign power as the vast mainland but governed by a unique, historically conditioned set of organising and operating principles, marks this city as a show within the larger show of China now.
The seven artists gathered here, born between 1968 and 1981, are key members of the first generation of Hong Kong artists to understand themselves as working in an inherently transnational and postindustrial context. Emerging in the years since the handover, they have articulated a new sensibility, in line with their hometown’s unique position in relation to the narratives of postcolonialism and national identity. Like young artists anywhere, they have struggled to find a voice inflected
by yet distinct from the influences of recent artistic trends, institutional critique and relational aesthetics foremost among them. And like any generation deserving of that designation, they have been in constant dialogue, first in the classrooms of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (where most of them trained), then in the studios of Fotan and at the ever widening range of contemporary-art exhibitions and events throughout the city. To meet living costs, most have worked—as art teachers,
exhibition organisers, newspaper columnists—broadening their range of social
involvement beyond their own tight-knit circle and ultimately lending a similar depth and texture to their vastly different practices.
If this exhibition is a show within a show, it is also a show of shows, bringing together seven distinct bodies of work, each of which has something to do with, and something to say about, this place in which it has been produced. These works do not engage the surrounding cultural and political situation directly through the easy language of symbolism (as is too often the case on the mainland) but rather through protracted research and reflection. From Lee Kit’s typically cramped dwelling to Nadim Abbas’s psychoanalytic riff to Doris Wong’s encyclopedic roster of Hong Kong
artists, and from there on to Leung Chi Wo’s inquiry into the power of the name Victoria, Adrian Wong’s cheeky homage to Hong Kong’s first film, Pak Sheung Chuen’s archive of the invisible, and Tsang Kin-wah’s pained internal monologue, this is an assemblage of investigations into just what it means to inhabit this city at this moment. Having moved beyond the point where glib plays on cultural identity
or empty odes to urbanism can sustain anyone’s interest, these artists are returned to a field where the conceptual, the lyrical, the intellectual, and the visual must work together to give their work staying power.
The past few years have seen a new sort of ambition, and an ensuing anxiety, take hold as Hong Kong has begun to ask itself how it can become an international cultural center in line with its enviable economic clout. As Hong Kong continues to search for its rightful place in a global community of tastes and ideas, it would be wise to take a cue from its young artists, whose works and lives seem to answer the questions at the heart of this ongoing debate.
