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The Must-See Art Exhibitions for November 2021 in Hong Kong
Here are the latest shows, immersive experiences, and must-see art exhibitions for this November 2021.
M+ Museum
Not a "show" per se, but we can't round up everything art in the city without shouting out the brand new M+ museum. The highly-anticipated cultural hub opened last week and houses 33 galleries, three cinemas, museum shops and much more – you can find out everything you need to know by reading our guide here. Entry will be free for all visitors for a year, with an exception for entry to special exhibitions and events.
M+ Museum, 38 Museum Drive, West Kowloon Cultural District
Axel Vervoordt Gallery: Shen Chen
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition by Shanghai-born, New York-based artist Shen Chen, comprising 12 paintings created between 2009 and 2021. Although Shen’s works bear stylistic influences of paintings from the "color field" movement of 1940s and ‘50s New York, his practice is rooted in a philosophical mode of thought deriving from his training in traditional Chinese ink painting. If you don’t catch the show in Hong Kong now, you’ll have to visit Kanaal in Antwerp in the spring, the exhibition’s next stop.
Until December 25. Axel Vervoordt Gallery, 21/F, Coda Designer Building, 62 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang
Ora-Ora, Tai Kwun: Living with Botero by Fernando Botero
Living with Botero is an exhibition of work at Ora-Ora's new gallery in Tai Kwun by Colombian-born figurative artist Fernando Botero, in a faithful recreation of his New York apartment. An open invitation to step into the artist's working environment, the show comprises paintings and drawings never seen before in Hong Kong, many of which Botero lived with and considered his personal favourites.
Until November 27. Ora-Ora, 105-107, Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central
Woaw Gallery: TEKNOLUST: OBJECTOPHILIC FUTURES
Curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler and Melanie Ouyang Lum, Woaw Gallery’s latest exhibition, TEKNOLUST: OBJECTOPHILIC FUTURES opens with Stephen Neidich’s The so-called blush response (2021); a set of kinetic curtains that animate at will, obscuring then revealing then obscuring once more what lays beyond. From female human-android sculptures emerging from the gallery floor to EPOCH’s REPLICANTS, a full-scale, digital replication of Queen’s Road Central, prophesying the future of the neighbourhood as one devoid of humanity, the multi-artist showcase examines many, many “What If?” theses.
Until November 24. Woaw Gallery, 9 Queen’s Road Central, Central
Carnaby Fair x The Stallery: SUB9TURE
The Stallery plays host to Hong Kong’s first ‘CAP-ART’ exhibition in collaboration with Carnaby Fair, showcasing seven local Hong Kong artists’ capsule collections including those of The Stallery’s own Ernest Chang, Plumber King and DaddyBoy®️. Works showcased will include digital installations, large-scale displays, and interactive experiences, with all artists involved collaborating with Carnaby Fair to imprint their pieces onto caps, t-shirts and NFTs. All proceeds from the exhibition donated to V Cycle, a Hong Kong social enterprise that supports poverty alleviation and COVID-19 stress relief. Beyond the gallery exhibition, the façade of The Stallery will also become canvas to a large-scale, cross-generational collaborative graffiti-jamming project for Mr. Yim (The Plumber King) and BOMS.
Until February 13. The Stallery, G/F, 82A Stone Nullah Lane, Wan Chai
10 Chancery Lane Gallery: Love in the Dream
A celebration of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery’s 20th anniversary, Love in the Dream is a sweeping 44-artist showcase, with the exhibition itself segmented into groupings of artwork thematically, salon-style. Sections include works built from resin, a dedication to Southeast Asian artists, photography and a solo partition for Hong Kong’s iconic Frog King Kwok — also featured in the toilet.
Until January 22. 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, G/F, 10 Chancery Lane, Soho, Central
THE SHOPHOUSE x MINE PROJECT: perspective parallel by Yang Bodu and Zhao Zhao
A collaborative exhibition between THE SHOPHOUSE, MINE PROJECT and Qiong Jiu Tang, perspective parallel is a collective exhibition between Yang Bodu and Zhao Zhao, the couple’s first-ever joint feature. The title of the exhibition nods at the couple’s daily routine; a communal experience of shared time, shared space and shared professions as artists. Bodu’s paintings are connected by similar points of obscurity, from one jet-black stripe to another jet-black column in a separate painting; a theme that acts as portals throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Zhao’s paintings, on the other hand, posits questions asked since time immemorial: What is “THE WORLD”? Zhao’s answer: A fully abstract series that neither answers nor posit; instead, leaves the viewer wondering if the point of reference is microbial cells, floating grains of sand or the entire galaxy from the point of view of an omniscient narrator.
Until 21 November. THE SHOPHOUSE, 4 Second Lane, Tai Hang
Gallery HZ x Arta: skin in the game
From mixed-media paintings by Ewa Budka, Javier Martin and Ewelina Skowrońska to photography by Chong-Il Woo, Gallery HZ and Arta’s group exhibition skin in the game brings together pieces that thematically represent the complexities of womanhood in today’s increasingly ambiguous world, especially with regard to gender, gender expression and gendered expectations.
Until December 16. Gallery HZ, 222 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan
Karin Weber Gallery: Wish You Well by Sharon Lee, Wai Kit Lam and Linda Norris
Karin Weber Gallery’s Wish You Well exhibition is a celebration of neither painting nor installation, instead, focuses attention on an "often underestimated" medium: that of the A6 square-footage of a postcard. Sharon Lee’s body of work, for which this exhibition is named after, is inspired by postcards of the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Garden, while Wai Kit Lam and Linda Norris present their submissions from the “Root & Branch” project, where postcard-sized collages and paintings thematically linked through inclusions of wood and trees delve into notions of identity and heritage.
Until December 18. Karin Weber Gallery, 20 Aberdeen Street, Central
Gagosian: Jonas Wood
Jonas Wood’s plant-focused oeuvre makes its way to Hong Kong for the very first time with this solo exhibition at the Gagosian gallery, featuring ten new paintings of flowers, fruits and houseplants rendered on black backgrounds alongside two series of related drawings including Yellow Flower with Lines 2 (2021). Originally from the East Coast, Wood’s interest in flora manifested upon his move to Los Angeles in 2003, where lush, verdant growth reflect the artist’s immediate environment at home as well as his then-new chosen home’s cultural identity.
Until January 15. Gagosian, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central
Simon Lee Gallery: Georg Karl Pfahler
Designated as Georg Karl Pfahler’s first solo exhibition in Asia, this showcase predates the exhibition’s later, more comprehensive showing in Spring 2022 in the gallery’s London chapter. Here, Pfahler’s work from 1965 to 1975 is exhibited, beginning first with the artist’s Tex and Metro series in the early ‘60s to his later Ost-West Transit and Espan series that defined his work through the ‘70s. Known as one of the first “hard-edged painters”, Pfahler’s signature traces through abstract geometric shapes and crisp colour-blocking; an exploration of colour, shape and space that defined the artist’s entire life’s work.
Until January 8. Simon Lee Gallery Hong Kong, 304, The Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central
White Cube: His Own Worst Enemy by Damien Hirst
His Own Worst Enemy features sculptures from Damien Hirst’s Venice installation Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017) — as well as a series of new paintings entitled The Revelations. Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017), in development for over a decade, weaves a tale of an incredible archaeological excavation from an ancient shipwreck, with found treasures verging on whimsy and the fantastical, including a black-bronze sculpture of The Severed Head of Medusa (2008).
Until January 8. White Cube Hong Kong, 50 Connaught Road Central, Central
David Zwirner: Isa Genzken
If you’ve found yourself in the vicinity of Victoria Dockside and K11 MUSEA in recent months, you’d undoubtedly have walked past one of Isa Genzkhen's most recognisable works: Rose II, standing ever blooming, ever larger than life. Coinciding with the 8.5-metre-tall sculpture’s tenure in Hong Kong, Isa Genzken's key works from the past decade — including the “tower” and “column” sculptures and the Schauspieler (Actors) series — will be on display for the artist’s first solo presentation in greater China.
Until December 18. David Zwirner, 5-6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Central
PERROTIN: Behind My Back, in Front of My Eyes by Gregor Hildebrandt
Gregor Hildebrandt’s preferred medium of choice is a technique named “Sound Paper,” or “Tönendes Papier,” as it was first coined by inventor Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 in reference to magnetic tape used to tape audio; then, the kinds of paper coiled in cassette tapes several decades later. Hildebrandt, however, uses the medium to produce silence. Capturing a recorded melody on empty tapes, Hildebrandt then uses the treated audio cassette tape as “paint”; thus, "sticking" music to canvas in what he calls “rip-off paintings.” From the graphic motifs of White flower pointing up (Alphaville) to the multi-coloured Sur le comédien, Hildebrant manufactures a silent soundscape rife with memories, yet amputated from its latent musicality.
Until November 20. Perrotin Hong Kong, 807, K11 ATELIER, Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Tai Kwun: Poetic Heritage
Questions of heritage, generally, most likely, come with implications of tradition; of heirlooms. Of things and lore and customs someone from generations past thought was worth keeping. Poetic Heritage — a joint exhibition borne out of Tai Kwun Contemporary’s open call for curatorial proposals — ruminates on precisely this; on the how, the why and, then, the why not. Six chosen artists and artist groups intentionally chose debris and objects — think reclaimed granite, wood pallets and cardboard boxes — otherwise unsavoury and headed for the landfill as materials that hold evidence of the past. As evidence of stories untold and forgotten.
Until November 21. Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong
The post The Must-See Art Exhibitions for November 2021 in Hong Kong appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
The Latest Art Exhibitions to See This Month
Here are the latest must-see art exhibitions and experiences to satiate the art-and-culturally-minded individuals in this city.
Soluna Fine Art: Prism
Until October 21, Soluna Fine Art presents a group exhibition titled Prism in celebration of the third anniversary of the gallery's relocation to Sheung Wan. Its biggest group show yet, the exhibition comprises the work of 16 local and international artists.
Until October 21. Soluna Fine Art, G/F 52 Sai Street, Sheung Wan
Woaw Gallery: Maxx Headroom by Michael Lau
Hong Kong-based artist Michael Lau, known as the “Godfather of the Designer Toy”, is presenting a solo exhibition at Woaw Gallery in Central. Original paintings and sculptures from the artist’s signature Gardener series showcase an important part of Lau’s career. Delving into Maxx Heardoom, hero of the Gardener series, the exhibition explores the concept of youth, passion and perseverance through a selection of works old and new. It also reflects Lau’s own journey through the character of Maxx as a metaphor for the artist himself — a strong-willed character who sacrifices everything for his passion.
Until October 23. Woaw Gallery, 9 Queens Road Central
K11 MUSEA: A Muse by the Sea
K11 MUSEA is presenting a collection of six art and design dreamlands – titled Muse Rooms – to bring visitors an immersive experience into arts and culture. Six leading artists, including a'strict, Jon Buergerman, Nelson Chow, Tony Oursler, Hajime Sorayama and Joyce Wang, are tasked to put their artistic spin to some of K11 MUSEA's most popular retail destinations. Interior designer Joyce Wang has for example, reimagined an ice cream pavilion with creations by Cookie DPT, while Sorayama continues to blur boundaries between virtual and tangible with his installation at Gold Ball. Discover it all for yourself now with a visit to K11 MUSEA.
Until November 14. K11 MUSEA Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Perrotin: Gregor Hildebrandt
Eyes by Gregor Hildebrandt at Perrotin Hong Kong, 2021. (Photo: Ringo Cheung.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
German artist Gregor Hildebrandt's latest exhibition Behind My Back, in Front of My Eyes, is on show at Galerie Perrotin until November 20, marking his second solo show in the city. Hildebrandt often used repetition in his works, and "sound paper" as his medium, allowing him to visualise music and to paint, or stick, "music" onto canvas.
Until November 20. Perrotin, 807, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim She Tsui.
David Zwirner: Isa Genzken
Courtesy the artist, David Zwirner and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne)
This month, David Zwirner Hong Kong presents the first solo exhibition in greater China by artist Isa Genzken. It presents key works from the past decade, including highlights from her Schauspieler (Actors) series, as well as recent “tower” sculptures (pictured), which together attest to Genzken’s continued innovation as an artist. The show also coincides with an ongoing presentation of the artist’s Rose II at K11 Musea.
Opens October 20 until December 18. David Zwirner Hong Kong, 5-6/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central
(Hero image: Exhibition view at David Zwirner Hong Kong)
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What’s On This Month in the World of Art
What’s the future of fashion? What’s unique about Hong Kong style? What’s next for your industry? What’s in and what’s out? We pose these questions to the designers, entrepreneurs, leaders, stylists and influencers who’ve made an impact on fashion here.
With Covid focusing attention on our own backyard, this era of style in the city is renegotiating in familiar territory. And from talking to the experts, common arcs emerge.
Johanna Ho
Designer, sustainability champion and founder of Phlvo Platform
Circularity, transparency, responsibility, respect and a proper value system – I feel these all must be the future of fashion. In fashion, I’m inspired by people, human values and the new possibilities of technology. In Hong Kong, there’ll be more connections between fashion education and the industry: mentorships and bridging or training programmes for students within the industry. This is a new season for me – with this new platform concept of Phlvo I want to start bringing a connection between the East and West. I don’t want to chase the chase anymore, or “accelerate growth”, which has been the fashion industry over the past decades – fast fashion, whether mass-produced or luxury brands. It’s all about reworking the system and dealing with issues such as exploitation, values, customers experiences, connection and relevance.
Karmuel Young
Designer and founder of Karmuel Young
Fashion’s future is gender-neutral. Some brands propose that direction by wading into gender-fluid, unisex or polysexual fashions, but I believe it’s about an extreme sense of self. Fashion is becoming more open to self-expression and letting the audience decide what they buy and want to wear. The younger generation pays less attention to traditional gender roles and looks and more towards integrity and authenticity.
Arnault Castel
Founder of Kapok
The future of fashion is in rediscovering how to make people feel beautiful, confident, comfortable and fun. It should be less a signifier of “coolness” or social class. It should stay away from limited edition and collectors and become again a way for us to communicate who we are. Hong Kong is unique because it embraces the new with a great knowledge of past style. Hong Kong style has no fear.
Vivienne Tam
Designer and founder of Vivienne Tam
Since the pandemic began and everyone is homebound, fashion is localising … Society is now ready to support and appreciate Hong Kong designs, we’ll search deeper into Hong Kong’s history and culture, but maintain a proud global voice. It seems there are more restrictions and taboos with the political conflicts around; it’s getting challenging, but challenges make us more creative and focused. The future of fashion is more inclusive with universal values and an emphasis on sustainability and health. People are adopting healthier lifestyles and sporting cultures – I’m designing to blend beauty and style with protection, as in my crossover collection with Masklab and using antibacterial fabric for my travelling trench coats when the gates finally open. Fashion shows can be at any time now and anywhere; the fashion norms and rules are deconstructed and move towards more artistic and unexpected ways of presentation.
Douglas Young
Co-founder, Goods of Desire
Fashion, like art, is a form of social commentary, and our society is very polarised now. You have split realities and fashion will mirror that, in the sense that it will become more diversified. In the past there was a central flow of fashion trends. In the future, these trends will break into fragments and become multiple trends. There won’t be one mainstream trend any longer – the future is diversity. Local fashion will find its own identity and uniqueness through local street culture, because Hong Kong is an advanced city. People are sophisticated in their style and taste, very international and diversified … Hong Kong will soon find its own identity, uniqueness and style. I’m inspired by the way people dress in Hong Kong, especially grass-roots people. The way they boldly mix things freely without consideration – so you have a lot of accidental fashionistas! Also, the ingenuity of adapting things really inspires me, not just in fashion but design in general. The unlikely combinations produce surprising contrasts. Hong Kong people don’t seem inhibited by putting things together in the same way that, say, Westerners might not do.
What’s next for us? We’ve found success in translating our company from initially focusing on furniture to lifestyle and clothing. We found a unique angle in Chinese clothing that’s simultaneously both traditional and modern. A continued focus on boosting our e-commerce is also on the agenda. It also allowed us to discover a market beyond borders for our type of clothing and we’ll continue to pursue that.
Elle Lee
KOL, actress and emcee
The future of fashion is more environmentally cautious, easy on the Earth and soft on the skin. Hong Kong style has always been quite sharp, especially for ladies. Women aren’t afraid to dress out and express their personality in unisex and edgy ways.
Mayao Ma
Director of Fashion Farm Foundation
In the future, fashion will be more focused on the design than where the brand or designer is from. There are many more Hong Kong brands with potential to stand out in the international market. I believe there’ll be more collaborations too. For spring/summer 2022, the Fashion Farm Foundation is presenting the new collections of three brands – Pabe Pabe (accessories), Ponder.er (men’s and womenswear) and VANN (jewellery) – at Paris Fashion Week with a digital film presentation. The crew members are all from Hong Kong. It’s a chance to show the world how creative and talented our young people.
Kev Yiu
Designer and founder of Kev Yiu
Fashion has always been a personal statement of who you are, rather than trends to be followed. However, with technological advances I can imagine in the near future there’ll be something like a one-button device that can dress you up in any way you can imagine.
As the younger generation has become more open-minded through the information on social media and the internet, there’ll be no more stereotypes. The boundaries are about to be broken. Well, maybe they already have been: men in skirts and other gender-blending concepts are no longer as shocking as they once were.
Justine Lee
Stylist and influencer
With the limitations of travel, I feel the city is looking inwards for fashion talent. I still feel there’s room for creativity even with the restrictions we’re under. In Hong Kong, the speed at which we consumed fashion before the protests and Covid-19 was super-fast-paced and, in a way, unsustainable. We’ve slowed down a lot recently and I think consumers, brands and retailers are reprioritising their focus. There’s a greater sense of community and I feel we’re seeing a gradual shift into more conscious consumption.
Faye Tsui
KOL and stylist
The pandemic led us to adopt a new normal in every way, people are paying more attention to reducing pollution. I’ve noticed people in Hong Kong are changing their buying behaviour – it’s important for local designers
to be environmentally conscious, use sustainable materials, especially packaging, and design in a way that’s more durable. Now, I think Hong Kong has its own unique style. People tend to showcase their own personality and won’t just follow a trend if it doesn’t fit them – this wasn’t the case 20, 10 or even five years ago, when fashionistas were following or copying Japan, Paris or London … Now, we’re unique.
Jacky Tam
Stylist and editorial director at Vogue Man Hong Kong
The future of fashion is all about being yourself, trusting your own feeling and being honest to yourself. I think freedom defines Hong Kong style. After the past year or so, people are going through major changes, mentally as well, from being fashionable to wearing comfy PJs at home. To me, comfort is in; being pretentious is out.
Dorian Ho
Designer and founder of Dorian Ho
Nowadays fashion isn’t just about the design, but also how you build and market your brand. Social media have led consumers to adopt and move on from fashion trends quicker than ever before. We must react very quickly, and adjust designs and stock, but also learn to anticipate what the market wants from us. With the development of technology such as AR and VR, I believe the future of fashion is sustainability and technologically innovative design. There’ll be breakthroughs in design and more functional materials to improve the quality of life.
Barney Cheng
Designer and founder of Barney Cheng Couture
What’s the future of fashion in Hong Kong? Three words: sustainability, awareness and responsibility. I think it’ll be all about customisation, personalisation and interactive creativity next in the local industry. What’s Hong Kong style really? Branded living? My style is extravagant simplicity, always has been, always will be. And what’s next for my brand? I’m a glorified tailor to the discerning few! I’ve been here for 28 years and hope to stay here for at least as long in the future.
Harrison Wong
Designer and founder of Harrison Wong
What’s the future of fashion? In design, sustainability remains the main issue and concern from my perspective. From a retail perspective, I think successful businesses will become more data-driven. By leveraging data on consumer trends and tastes, brands can create pieces consumers are more likely to buy. AR and VR will increasingly redefine the online and in-store experience. And high-tech will continue to reshape fashion – for example, catwalks will become increasingly virtual and new innovative functional fabrics will appear. Hong Kong-style is unique, because of the diversity of influences and cultures, as well as our dynamic metropolitan environment.
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Dissolutions of Gender: Ze/Ro Exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts
The Ze/Ro exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts is sparked by the idea of an increasingly gender-neutral world.
The curator (an artist herself) Shirky Chan tells us about the Hong Kong women artists featured in the show, whose works explore ideas of femineity and empowerment.
When the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association issued an open call for a potential project for its Summer Programme (which connects member galleries with emerging local artists, curators and art writers), Shirky Chan – herself an artist and curator – answered with a proposal centring on women and gender equality. Chan's idea was to bring together female artists from different generations to explore empowerment, their place within and outside of society, their desired dissolutions of gender, as well as each artist’s unique creative vision.
The association was impressed with her idea and she was invited to visit Ben Brown Fine Arts’ space at The Factory in Wong Chuk Hang, after which she began to approach women artists about being part of the show.
The result is Ze/Ro, which is showing at the gallery until August 26. A showcase of the works of five local women artists, its title is inspired by the use of the gender-neutral pronoun “ze”, rather than “he” or “she”; thus, in place of the apparent male bias in the word “hero”, Chan suggests the non-gender alternative ze/ro.
Of the five artists in the exhibition, Chan Ka Kiu is the youngest and also the only out lesbian – her work is described by Shirky Chan as “post-90s”.
“I think society is more aware of discrimination and gender is not really a restriction or burden to her. Her works are more carefree. That’s why I wanted to choose cross-generational artists in the same show.”
Ka Kiu was around eight years old when she and a friend were both diagnosed with a bone tumour – tragically, her friend died after the tumour became cancerous. Ka Kiu’s tumour has stayed with her all these years, closely monitored through many trips to the hospital.
“The fear of death,” says the artist, “came to me at a very young age.”
The show features four pieces from her series A List of Things to Bring to Paradise. “These are some little things I think are important for my life right now,” says Ka Kiu. “Maybe I’ll go to hell, maybe I’ll make another series.”
Love, Name of a Bird is a headless flapping wooden bird sculpture suspended from the ceiling, pressed against patterned glass and basking in pink-yellow lighting (“like a sunset, like paradise.”). Ka Kiu says this piece is about the first life she took away, a bird that died after it hit her studio window. She heard a large bang in the night and found its body the next morning. “So this bird,” she says about her work, “will never die.”
Her favourite self-created piece is I Wanna Be Your Dog – inflatable dogs with “fragile” stickers attached. “I think everyone has this moment where you just want to be a pet with a nice owner,” she says. And the sticker? “I wanted to stick this label on myself – fragile!”
Ants, in pencil on paper, depicts minuscule hand-drawn insects. “I had to sharpen the pencil constantly. I think ants are a little, tedious, mundane annoyance, so it’s one thing I’d like to bring to paradise. Paradise will be peaceful and just happiness 24/7, so I want to bring something annoying, something not too horrible.”
Ka Kiu’s other featured work is the first thing you see when you walk into the exhibition – an acrylic disinfection box filled with cleaning supplies perched on a metal shelf, that guests can become part of by placing their hands into glove inserts. Titled Pamper Day, the piece reflects handling toxins, things that are contagious – and how we might feel that there are similar things inside ourselves: “I hope when we think something is bad inside, we take a pamper day and take care of it,” she says.
Like Ka Kiu, the artist Christy Chow also has coloured light on her work. Her piece Baby #1 concerns the first of her two miscarriages. “Of course, I was very sad,” she says. “I suddenly realised, ‘I don’t know who I can talk to,’ because this isn’t a topic that people love to talk about – it’s different from your relative or friends passing away. There’s a funeral, there are formal things you can do to grieve. With a miscarriage, there’s basically no grieving at all.”
The piece is in wool – pinched and rolled and unrolled with water and cleaning detergent – pinned on to silk. “It was very labour-intensive and took me about two weeks. I liked the labour – it was like a meditation, the repetition – it was actually the way I grieved,” Chow says.
The last image she saw of her baby was a black-and-white ultrasound. “I don’t think that their life should be that sad, so I tried to give them colour, vivid colour, but matching the same hues of the black and white,” she says.
Chow’s other piece comes from her Disaster series, which is centred on the female body – Chow aims to talk about real bodies and not the “bodies you see in magazines and ads: perfect and hairless”.
“Everything is so natural about the body – menstruation, urine, breastmilk. No one wants to talk about it, but it’s so natural. It’s almost like when you don’t talk about a disaster. It happens in our world – it’s natural.”
Her work Flood, in embroidery on vinyl, shows a woman (“like a goddess, like a Mother Earth”) relaxed on waves, with liquid pouring out from her. This is Chow's way of talking about bodies when society doesn’t want to: “If women don’t talk about it, then who will?” she asks.
Further into the exhibit are two video works by Jess Lau, both of which feature her own hands. Drowning, a fixed stop-motion animation on a projector, consists of a drawing of her right hand, erased and redrawn until the paper wore out. Animators act like a god of their animation, controlling its plot and timing, but Lau says she wanted to loosen her “power” and let ‘time’ decide when the animation would end: when the paper was too worn out to be drawn on again.
Her other work, Handnote, is a video poem made of three parts: a stop-motion animation of her hand, black-and-white film photos she took and a series of women’s hands she found in old Hong Kong advertisements. It’s a collage of sorts displayed on a small television set, which, says Lau, gives the video a special texture that connects different women from different times.
According to the show’s curator, Lau’s pieces focus on the most intimate part of her body, the hands. “She’s using her body, the external, to guide or lead to her inner feelings as to what a woman should be.”
Jaffa Lam and Au Hoi Lam are the two oldest artists featured in Ze/Ro, whose works conform to more traditional fine-art media, says Chan. Jaffa is a sculptor, which the curator says is significant as there’s an assumption that female artists can’t – or won’t – undertake laborious work. But for Jaffa, the wooden medium is no restriction.
Lady/Tree in Travel represents Jaffa herself: it’s the same height, width and weight as she is. The sculpture is made of reworked wood and is displayed in the middle of an open crate – in the past when Jaffa had overseas exhibitions she couldn’t attend, she'd send the tree in her place. On the trunk, three Chinese characters say her name, “work” and “wood”.
As a single unmarried woman without children, Jaffa has fantasised about being pregnant at some stage. Oval Chair is made of an old chair frame, stainless steel and recycled crate wood. Seen from afar, it resembles a throne, with a regal air of elegance (“the way pregnant women should be treated,” says Chan). As you approach it, the rounded red-ball shape looks akin to a swollen pregnant stomach. It’s also a reference to Jaffas candies, sweet and warm, even as the cold stainless steel works against that suggestion.
Coloured with mercurochrome, a compound formerly used as an anaesthetic and dye that's no longer sold because of its high mercury content, Red Balloon is Jaffa’s favourite piece. “A balloon should be soft and fragile, just like women are supposed to be, but actually we’re hard and solid and strong,” says Chan.
Au Hoi Lam’s acrylic paintings on canvas were made 18 years ago. At the time, she’d just completed her master of fine art degree and was experiencing some uncertainty about her future. “The works capture my authentic self at that time,” she says.
Titled Memo, Pink and Blue and The Cradle, the pieces are described by the artist as “transforming inner turbulence through the act of painting, and realising a better state of being”.
Memo and Pink and Blue feature etchings in pencil and ballpen on canvas or linen. According to Chan, they’re “something like a secret code, like diary entries scribbled on canvas. She wants to express but not express at the same time; to let people know what she’s feeling but keep some secrets to herself.”
"Ze/Ro" is showing at Ben Brown Fine Arts, Unit 202, The Factory, 1 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang until 26 August. You can find out more here.
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