Tai Kwun is proud to present its first-ever Art Week (22 to 30 March 2025) - a dynamic nine-day celebration brimming with cutting-edge performances from emerging artists, absorbing cultural events, extended exhibition hours, and eclectic commercial gallery offerings. 

As the highlight of the week, Artists’ Night, presented by Tai Kwun and supported by Art Basel Hong Kong, returns on Friday, 28 March 2025, curated by Jill Angel Chun and Shuman Wang. From 7-11 pm, venues across Prison Yard will be transformed with a cross-disciplinary lineup of performances, music, and entrancing experiences. Highlights include:

• Live performance and film screening by Lawrence Lek, named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people working in AI in 2024. Blending Sino-futurism, wasteland aesthetics, and expressive electronic soundscapes, Lek examines the body, identity, agency, and emotions in the age of artificial intelligence in “NOX”.
   

• Experimental electronic artist 33EMYBW will present a brand-new audiovisual performance, Holes of Sinian. The live set incorporates vocal samples and field recordings, blending music from China’s borderlands, Tanzania, Bulgaria, and Thailand.

Throughout Art Week, Tai Kwun Contemporary will offer extended hours for its ongoing exhibitions, providing greater access for arts professionals, VIP guests, and the public, including a line up of three female artists: Alicja Kwade: Pretopia; Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering; and Maeve Brennan: Records.  

Tai Kwun is proud to present “DigiRadiance: GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL”, an immersive digital exhibition on view from 2 to 30 November 2024 in F Hall Studio. Featuring a newly commissioned multi-channel video installation produced by the acclaimed Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana, this exhibition, curated by Tobias Berger, brings together the far-flung islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Hong Kong. Based on the moving yet tragic story of the sinking of SS Ventnor, the video immerses audiences in an extraordinary funeral procession from New Zealand to Hong Kong. The artist’s work draws on what is shared by these islands, including a strong maritime legacy and a history shaped by colonial forces—in a way following her distinctive blend of history and fiction in her large-scale video installation, in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17), when she represented New Zealand in the 2017 Venice Biennale.

In “DigiRadiance: GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL”, Lisa Reihana explores issues surrounding foreign labour, longing, and displacement. The work takes us back to the late 1800s, shining light on the untold stories of Chinese gold miners who relocated to the Otago region on the South Island of New Zealand. Under tremendous hardship and severe living conditions, many died far away from their homeland and became “hungry ghosts”. Delving into this important part of history, Reihana revisits the story of the SS Ventnor, which in 1902 was en route to Hong Kong and Canton carrying coal and 500 boxes with the remains of the Chinese gold miners. During a storm, the ship sank close to a Māori settlement south of Hokianga on the North Island of New Zealand, where the Māoris found and gathered the lost remains and buried them ceremonially according to their customs.

Venue address: F Hall Studio, Tai Kwun

Realism and fiction blur in the otherworldly realm that is In the Land Beyond Living, opening up new angles from which to contemplate contemporary society in China and the human condition at large. With elements of painting, sculpture, video, sound, installation, and set design, this solo exhibition by the artist Tao Hui takes us from north to south, the inland to the coast, the urban to the rural, the industrial to the natural.

In the Land Beyond Living highlights how Tao Hui’s absurd yet realistic artistic practice explores individual struggles. These include the ethnic minorities guarding the Gansu Corridor; migrant workers striving for a better life in drastically developing cities; and the nouveau riche yearning for spiritual sustenance. In seeking new ways to present and comprehend the complex realities of today, the artist interweaves depictions of harsh environments, migration flows, geographical disparities, and the relentless drive for a better life—into surrealistic imagery that casts new light onto the complex flow of reality.

Curator: Jill Angel Chun

Venue address: 3/F, JC Contemporary

Tai Kwun Contemporary’s BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair is back for its sixth year. Held from 30 August to 1 September 2024, the latest edition hosts the largest number of exhibitors since its inception: over 110 local and international publishers, artists, booksellers and organisations will be featured across all floors of JC Contemporary at Tai Kwun. The three-day event will also feature a robust series of programmes (displays, performances, talks, workshops), together with Code.Xcess in the Artists’ Book Library. The special project explores how artists play with “codes”—using calendars, cartoons, dictionaries, digital programming language, guidebooks, karaoke, and more—to rethink how such structures form and affect our knowledge, understanding, and behaviour.

This year’s BOOKED: promises to be another exciting edition, and features a range of new and returning exhibitors from Hong Kong and abroad, including Printed Matter (New York), The Book Society / mediabus (Seoul), ZINECOOP (Hong Kong), Lubok Verlag (Germany), Center for Art Research and Alliances (New York), Hauser & Wirth Publications (Hong Kong, Zurich), Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo), one half in (Zhejiang), In Plain Words (Singapore), and more. Various exhibitors in this year’s art book fair present publications that explore the idea of regeneration, be it rediscovering tradition, revitalising talent, or reinventing convention. From new publications to their articulation through timely projects and thought-provoking public programmes, this edition of the fair will offer various cultural and artistic perspectives to reimagine the familiar.

Book your tickets.

Venue address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Central

Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to present a major survey exhibition by the US-born artist Bruce Nauman, one of the most influential artists working today. Curated in collaboration with the Bruce Nauman Studio, and based primarily on works from the Pinault Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as loans from Tate, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Dia Art Foundation, and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation, Tai Kwun Contemporary's exhibition takes the form of a survey covering aspects of the artist's entire career, and is the first show of this kind to be presented in Asia.

With elements drawn from Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies, first shown at Punta Della Dogana, Venice, in 2021, the Tai Kwun Contemporary exhibition revisits fundamental elements ever-present in the artist's portfolio, from the artist's early neons to the recent Contrapposto series, along with drawings, large-scale sculptural and sound installations spanning more than six decades of the artist's practice. Curated by Carlos Basualdo, Marion Boulton 'Kippy' Stroud Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Caroline Bourgeois, Chief Curator at the Pinault Collection, and Pi Li, Head of Art at Tai Kwun, the exhibition will be on view from 15 May to 18 August 2024.

Bruce Nauman, Contrapposto Studies, I Through VII (2015–2016). Seven-channel video (colour, sound). © 2024 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Venue address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun, Central

Tai Kwun Contemporary presents Who is Who, an exhibition of new work by the artist Sarah Morris. The exhibition features her latest film ETC alongside a site-specific wall painting Lippo [Paul Rudolph]. 

ETC, filmed in Hong Kong in the spring of 2023 post-quarantine, highlights both iconic and lesser-known locations. The film features countless subjects alongside architect James Kinoshita, actress Josie Ho, and legendary graphic designer Henry Steiner—who in 1979 designed an Electronic Teller Card for HSBC titled ETC, a predecessor of today’s ATM card.

The film’s title ETC playfully recalls the Electronic Teller Card while considering Hong Kong as a global centre of commerce. The artist visualises the electronic and digital life of the city in an era marked by rapid change. Layering daily life and complex histories, the feature-length film reflects upon the use of space. In particular, Morris considers both macro and micro scales which propel the viewer into a field of fragmented narratives.

Venue address: 3/F JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun

Make & Believe is the the second exhibition of ARTS • TECH Exhibition 2.0 presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council this year. Curated and produced by Orlean Lai, this performative exhibition examines the notions of illusion and reality through theatrical performances, encompassing a spectrum of sounds, performances, and scenography.

Departing from traditional theatrical spaces, Make & Believe invites visitors to embark on an immersive exploration of its performative aspects within an exhibition space, creating a dynamic and interactive experience. Embodying the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), it offers a multi-sensory encounter by seamlessly integrating visual elements and scenography, fostering active observation and sensory perception. Throughout the exhibition’s opening hours, visitors will be treated to periodic live performances by performing artists and musicians. These captivating moments, in harmony with the carefully curated objects, scenography, lighting, and soundscapes, will serve as guides, leading visitors on captivating artistic journeys. Visitors can register online for free to experience how different mediums within the exhibition space collectively intertwine and resonate with one another to form one cohesive experience, while preserving each individual artist’s creative authenticity.

Venue address: F Hall Studio, Block 17, Tai Kwun

Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies focuses on the connections between art and larger themes of ecology in the context of the climate crisis. The exhibition asks what alternative narratives are activated through artists' visions that celebrate nature as an all-encompassing and generative force, many of them grounded in notions of care and interrelationship that are central to ecofeminism—that natural sustainability is based on the equality of human, nature, and other beings.

The exhibition references the mythological snake figure in East Asian culture, which often takes the form of a woman when walking amongst humans. Highlighting the green snake's potential for transformation and renewal—when snakes grow, they shed their skins—the exhibition is directly inspired by an ancient Chinese folktale, dating back at least 1000 years, about two powerful snake-demon sisters, White Snake and Green Snake, whose story reveals themes of agency, sisterhood, and gender fluidity. On another level, in the exhibition, the snake's sinuous curves echo the geomorphology of river systems and the vital energy of the water flowing through them. A number of artists in the exhibition have long been interested in and researching specific river ecosystems and mythologies. The exhibition thus deepens the dialogue between works by artists whose practice is rooted in geographies with longstanding political and environmental issues.

Venue address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun, Central

Tai Kwun Contemporary is delighted to announce a new live art exhibition by the trailblazing artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus; lives in New York and Athens). Her first solo exhibition in Asia, Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror will be presenting live installations that explore the sculptural body, image-making, and the deceleration of time. Comprising elements of performance, sound, photography and painting, the exhibition includes works newly commissioned for Tai Kwun’s architectural environment.

Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror gravitates around the production and transmission of image through the usage of mirrors dressed in gold. Playing with the myriad meanings and representations of gold in ancient and contemporary myths—as a colour in divination, as a symbolic representation of capitalism, or even a kitsch sample from pop culture—the permanence of gold historically connected the substance to eternity and the divine, yet this desire to possess gold has also turned into a symbol of capital and accelerated consumerism. The paradox between the immutability of gold and the shifting perceptions of its representation echoes the tensions in Hassabi’s practice—between subjects and objects, dance and sculpture, the live body and still images, the spectacular and the everyday.

The exhibition is constructed by durational performances which run daily from 11am to 7pm Tuesdays to Sundays, performed by dancers from Hong Kong and around the world. The artist will also be present in the exhibition for the first half of the exhibition period. A conversation with the artist will take place in October, while Tai Kwun Contemporary will also be hosting a series of public programmes during the course of the exhibition, so please stay tuned for further details.

For decades, television has been one of the most pervasive mass mediums globally, with live broadcasting central to how we consume information, news, and entertainment. At the same time, television has also heavily influenced art making, as artists experimented with various formats surrounding televisual culture.

Killing TV investigates how contemporary artists deploy, disrupt, and deconstruct television as medium and practice from the 1970s to the present day. Bringing together fifteen artists from across cultural and historical contexts, this group exhibition explores the interaction between contemporary art and television—in particular how artists have reflected on and challenged television’s pervasive power on culture as a whole.

With video works that take in performance art as well as sculptural installations—from parodying TV shows to appropriating TV commercials—the range of works in Killing TV invites audiences to embrace artistic experimentation and discover unfamiliar formats and settings. Together, the different artists explore issues of identity, consumerism, and human connection in society, thus probing the mass psychological and social impact of television from new perspectives. There is a thread of nostalgia that runs through Killing TV, yet the works of these artists encourage us to look, from acute and renewed perspectives in the present day, at the mass psychological and social impact of television, and how that fundamentally shaped the way we understand ourselves and the world.

Venue address: 1/F F Hall (entry through JC Contemporary), Tai Kwun

Featuring sculptural, photographic and filmic works by the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, the immersive exhibition HOPE taps into our hopes and fears about the impact of science on humanity. Her hyperrealistic and surreal works, often rooted in art historical forms, explore various “unexpected consequences”, whether negative or positive. HOPE raises important questions about the nature of history, progress, and technology, and ponders our collective ability to create warm and caring relationships and to live lovingly with each other.

Online Tickets:
$60 (Regular) / $50 (Concession)
On Site Tickets:
$70 (Regular) / $60 (Concession)

Venue address: 1/F, 3/F JC Contemporary, 1/F F Hall, Tai Kwun, Central

Tai Kwun Contemporary's BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair 2023 is returning for its fifth edition, with local, regional, and international exhibitors joining in person. Extending across the gallery spaces of JC Contemporary and F Hall in Tai Kwun, this latest edition also launches "Sounds Like Print” (28 April to November 2023), a project that explores the intersection of “sound” and “print”.

Featuring more than 80 artists, publishers, organisations, and booksellers, BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair also includes special displays by the Hong Kong photographer Kurt Tong, the Swiss independent publishing house Nieves, and the French publisher onestar press / Three Star Books, along with a wide range of public programming such as talks, workshops, and performances (more details to come).

BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair underscores Tai Kwun Contemporary's dedication to providing a platform for creative practitioners and publishers who are invested in books as a medium of artistic and intellectual expression while providing an opportunity for public audiences to enjoy and engage with these materials as art, and as an important resource for learning and research.

$40 (Regular ticket)
$30 (Concession ticket for full-time students, people with disabilities and senior citizens aged 60 or above)

Location: 1/F Galleries (JC Contemporary & F Hall)
2/F Artists’ Book Library

Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to announce Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, an upcoming exhibition on view from 24 December 2022 to 10 April 2023. As one of the first major exhibitions on LGBTQ+ perspectives in Hong Kong, Myth Makers circles around the core notion of “queer mythologies”. At the same time, the exhibition explores contemporary mythologies and practices of the body by gathering a diverse range of artistic idioms related to LGBTQ+ perspectives from over 50 artists from Asia and its diasporas. Curated by Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong, and co-presented with Sunpride Foundation, Myth Makers includes over 100 artworks in all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries, with one third of the works loaned from Sunpride’s collection; the exhibition furthermore includes a publication collaboration with Queer Reads Library. Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III also expands on the “Spectrosynthesis” series from Taipei, Bangkok, and now Hong Kong.

Myth Makers draws inspiration from artists addressing “queer mythologies”, who highlight either same-sex love and desire or gender fluidity as found in ancient belief systems and traditions in Asia. The exhibition also foregrounds the “new traditions” of our times, of spectacle and celebrity, playful and/or transgressive, along with non-normative bodily practices and histories in artworks by contemporary artists. The exhibition unfolds through three distinctive chapters and encompasses more than 100 works, which include new productions, historical works from the 1950s to the 1990s, and artworks on loan from the collection of the Sunpride Foundation. In bringing together such a plethora of artistic perspectives and vocabularies, Myth Makersendeavours to present a multiplicity of conversations, representations, and anti-representations of stories, individuals and communities. While the bulk of the exhibition focuses on living artists, some visionary and transformative figures of the past will also be underscored, including artists who lived in times when present-day LGBTQ+ identifications were not possible.

Venue address: JC Contemporary, Block 20, Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central

What’s the perfect gift for the holiday season? Often, it’s the intangible things that have the most lasting impression – those spontaneous smiles, those warm embraces, those moments shared together. Christmas is that special time of year where these little things take on an extra special meaning. It’s this spirit that Tai Kwun and The Hong Kong Jockey Club (“HKJC”) are channelling this Christmas with Simple Gifts of Joy. It’s a month-long celebration of joy, giving and togetherness; where we can come together with family and friends, revel in the spirit of the season, and savour those moments that truly matter.

Starting from 1 December, Tai Kwun will transform into a glorious festive destination full of colour, music and fun, where joyous performances will come alive and fill the air with celebration. Of course, there will be a Christmas tree – a grand, 12-metre-tall beauty that will be the centrepiece of Tai Kwun’s Parade Ground, accompanied every evening by a dazzling light show. And during the month, there will be an array of circus performances, Christmas music, delightful surprises and hidden treats that will create a unique festive atmosphere right across the complex. (1 December 2022-2 January 2023)

Snap the Joy

Christmas is a time for creating memories that will last a lifetime. As visitors make their way through Tai Kwun, they will come across festive “Snap the Joy” photobooths to capture those spontaneous moments of happiness with friends and family. Join TK Fans for exclusive online registration.

Tai Kwun Circus Plays

"Tai Kwun Circus Plays" proudly enters its fifth edition! From December to January, circus veterans in town and around the world will get together at Tai Kwun to present an array of breathtaking contemporary circus performances. Let's have a merry juggling festive season together with our friends and family! The circus season will kick off with an opening concert The Gift of Music by Noēma, the city's vocal ensemble, followed by LIFE Event No. 2 by the pioneering British circus group Gandini Juggling. UniCircle Flow from Japan will enthral audiences with their vigorous unicycling dance show, Rock It! Unicycle.

Only Bones v1.0, the award-winning solo show created by New Zealand physical theatre and mime artist Thomas Monckton, will come to Tai Kwun to deliver to audiences a joyful Christmas.Local creative team TS Crew, veteran choreographer Mui Cheuk Yin, and emerging local circus talents, will add a local touch and bring street vbes to life in Ho! Ho! Ho! Monkey King is Coming To Town and New Boom In Circus. The annual circus carnival will culminate with the Ting-koo-ki Mad Skills Gala and Battle (TKK), a passionate circus battle between top non-local jugglers from Taiwan, Costa Rica, Belgium and Brazil, as we welcome the arrival of 2023 at Tai Kwun.

Having showcased the unique and intimate atmosphere which can be conjured by the dramatically walled Prison Yard during 2019’s Projekt Berlin, Tai Kwun unveils a new Prison Yard Festival: Music from within, stretching from 30th November to 10th December 2022. For 11 days, Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard will be transformed into a performance space with a magical atmosphere not found anywhere else in the city, a natural home for music to take one on a heartwarming and soul-searching journey. Musicophiles are invited to find solace inside the festival, as the healing power of music liberates us from feelings of isolation, reminding the city of the joy it feels when we are all reunited.

Prison Yard Festival: Music from within brings together like-minded musicians, ensembles of fine instrumentalists, composers, performers, and, of course, audiences to create and share music in the unique and intimate setting of the Prison Yard. 6 broad- ranging performances will be presented. Amongst them, the unmissable highlight is the long-awaited Asian debut of Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński with the fine Italian ensemble il Pomo d’Oro as the Festival’s finale.

True to its title, Music from within begins indoors, in the JC Cube. And true to its location overlooking the Prison Yard, the festival opens with LENK Quartet performing music written “on the inside”. French composer Olivier Messiaen was a prisoner in a German prisoner-of-war camp in Poland in 1940 and composed Quartet for the End of Time for himself and three fine musicians who were among the other POWs in the camp. Through his extraordinary imagination, Messiaen led his ensemble, and his audience, in an escape from the confines of prison, flying above the material world in cosmic freedom. “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.”

The monumental Goldberg Variations are heard in a new light when pianist Rachel Cheung and lighting designer Amy Chan collaborate to realise Bach’s great keyboard composition from 1741 through a distinctly 21st-century lens.

Music emerges from within as the outdoor stage of the Prison Yard hosts a series of highly atmospheric evening concerts, including two chamber concerts by some of the finest musicians from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. Revered Hong Kong pianist Nancy Loo will perform Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata under the December full moon.

The Prison Yard Festival will close with the unstoppable energy of baroque ensemble il Pomo d’Oro with the stellar Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, making his Asian debut with two nights of dazzling virtuosity from the 17th and 18th centuries. Orliński is known as one of the world’s leading singers, triumphing on stage, in concert, and on recording, with sold-out concerts and recitals throughout Europe and the United States.

A major new exhibition by the internationally renowned Swiss media artist Pipilotti Rist will land in Hong Kong in Summer 2022, taking over all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries and beyond. Rist’s signature moving image installations—highly immersive, deeply sensual, and remarkably insightful—wrap visitors with a virtual hug of sounds, colours, and moving images. Visitors can walk and sprawl within her mesmerising installations, which prompt meditative introspection along with joy and exhilaration, opening up explorations of the body and the image, of exterior environments and interior mindscapes. This high-profile exhibition offers major works from Pipilotti Rist’s oeuvre along with newly commissioned site-specific works for Tai Kwun, in the galleries, on the Prison Yard and elsewhere in Tai Kwun. 

Lead Sponsor: Indosuez Wealth Management

Curator: Tobias Berger

3 August – 27 November 2022

Sunday – Thursday 10 am – 8 pm (Closed on Mondays)

Friday – Saturday 11 am – 9 pm

95 HKD (Adults) | 75 HKD (Concession)

Tickets are available online from July

Toying with doubles, the exhibition explores the concepts of déjà vu and parallax, considering how seemingly superficial differences may reveal much more than expected. While some works are doubled serially or thematically, with subtle slippages and variations, some other artists in the exhibition have works that gesture towards memory and the murky everyday lines between truth, perception, and fiction. Curated by Tobias Berger, Jill Angel Chun, and Daniel Szehin Ho, Double Vision seeks to define a distinctive spatial and temporal experience, with the exhibition prompting reflection on sensorial awareness and the contemporary production of reality.

Artists

Candice Breitz, Omer Fast, Sarah Lai, Ko Sin Tung, Kong Chun Hei, Ocean Leung, Li Shuang, Dane Mitchell, Peng Ke, Paul Pfeiffer, Hito Steyerl, Tamura Yuichiro, Magdalen Wong, Zheng Yuan

Venue address: 1/F & 3/F JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun, Central

We are living in such delicate times that simply going about on the street could bring tears to our eyes. Perhaps this came right after a video call with loved ones on the other side of the globe you had not seen for two years. Or perhaps your favorite bookstore or gym is closing down in the coming week. Maybe your brother suddenly told you he was emigrating soon. Or maybe you caught glimpses of some breaking news headline while on the subway.

emo gym—short for “emotion gymnasium”—calls on seven Hong Kong artists to confront, dissect, and possibly embrace the vulnerability of our times. Together, their sincere, poetic artworks invent an intimate yet experimental space, prompting visitors to uncover sentiments by discovering deep connections with the artworks as well as with each another.

Various forms of vulnerability are explored in the exhibition—vulnerability related to interpersonal relationships, digitisation of human experiences, and social institutions. emo gym raises the following important questions: does vulnerability constitute a fundamental state of human existence, and of the world we live in? Risky as it may be, would exposing and sharing nuanced senses of vulnerability catalyse a new world where we better co-exist with other emotional beings?

Venue address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Central

Poetic Heritage explores the critical and creative relationships between heritage and contemporary art through the works of six artists/artist groups from Hong Kong and beyond. Each of the artists offers insight on the many ways that “heritage” provides a productive lens to engage with contemporary issues, while expanding on the notion of “heritage” itself. In doing so, the exhibition also considers how much power and agency individuals have in determining what is retained and reimagined of our heritage.

Poetic Heritage looks at how discarded objects could be considered “heritage”. Rather than focusing on rare or expensive materials, some of the artists choose to salvage objects that are regarded as neglectable or negligible, prompting discussion about what differentiates art, heritage, and debris—and what is worth preserving. One of the overseas artists in the exhibition, Jorge Otero-Pailos, has suggested that “experimental preservationists carefully guard their freedom to choose objects that might be considered ugly, unsavoury, or unworthy of preservation.” Through their creative practices, artists have the potential to open up a new discourse on heritage-making, providing a more nuanced and pluralistic perspective on what to keep for future generations, and what to let go. By deliberatively salvaging unconventional things that have captured evidence of the past, the artists reveal the untold, forgotten, and neglected stories associated with expanded notions of heritage.

Gallery address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun, Central

bewitched, bewildered, bothered  is Banu Cennetoğlu’s artistic intervention for AAA’s exhibition Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys on view at Tai Kwun Contemporary from 23 April to 1 August 2021.

bewitched, bewildered, bothered is a three-day public programme and a publication that explore the politics of posthumous archives. Taking AAA’s temporary custodianship of the late Ha Bik Chuen’s personal archive as a starting point, this programme brings together artists and thinkers to discuss the challenges and inadequacies of archives to recover and represent what is “lost.” Developed as part of an ongoing dialogue with AAA’s Public Programmes Lead Özge Ersoy, the talks, the film screenings, and the publication together investigate art’s contested claims and repeated attempts to recover the lost, to remember the forgotten, to resurrect the dead, or to speak for the silent.

15.06 8pm–9:30pm Talk | In Conversation: Banu Cennetoğlu, Michelle Wong, and Özge Ersoy (Zoom)

16.06 7pm–9:30pm Screening and Talk | The Proposal with Jill Magid (JC Cube, Zoom)

17.06 7pm–9:30pm Screening and Talk | Narcissister Organ Player with Paul B. Preciado (JC Cube, Zoom)

trust & confusion is about the conversation of certainty and chance; the transformative power of bodies, intangibles, and ephemeral encounters; music and magic; and the luck of being alive, with all the concerns that come with it, be they human or not. Evolving, accumulating, the exhibition unfolds over several episodes, on site and online, from now to the end of the year.

trust & confusion transforms the white cube space into a fluctuating environment that hosts activities and sensations; it transforms this space in favour of movements, interactions, and deep listening for ears and bodies. A new relationship of you and I, along with new associations and experiences, shares this temporality. There are several visible performances taking place as you enter, and several invisible ones, mostly new commissions from an intergenerational, international, and cosmopolitan group of artists.

Artists: Tarek Atoui, Celeste Burlina, Alice Chauchat, Mette Edvardsen, Claudia Fernández, Félix González-Torres, Serene Hui, Ricky Jay, Kazuo Kitai, Nile Koetting, Lina Lapelytė, Nicholas Mangan, Yuko Mohri, Pan Daijing, Liliana Porter, Sean Raspet, Algirdas Šeškus, Sriwhana Spong, Trevor Yeung, Scarlet Yu and Xavier Le Roy, Joining from July: Maria Hassabi, Jamila Johnson-Small, Tamiko Nishimura, Moe Satt, Tino Sehgal

Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys stems from Asia Art Archive’s research since 2014 into the personal archive of the late Hong Kong–based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009). A self-taught sculptor and printmaker, Ha left behind a vast personal archive—his “thinking studio.” He documented exhibitions that he attended from the 1960s till the 2000s, and kept records in the form of ephemera, negatives, contact sheets, and photo albums. He also collected printed matter like illustrated magazines, and created book collages from these publications. As an autodidact, Ha’s library contained books on art and visual culture from far beyond the port city of Hong Kong. Ha’s idiosyncratic ways of collecting, organising, and regrouping materials blur the boundaries between document and artwork.

Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys is part of AAA’s 20th anniversary programmes, and is curated by Michelle Wong, with support from Vivian Poon, Garfield Chow, the Tai Kwun Contemporary Team, and the AAA Team.

Gallery address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Central

「INK CITY」sets out an expanded vision of ink art firmly grounded in current social, political, and aesthetic concerns, featuring artists inspired by immediate encounters with contemporary life. Often caught between an overwhelming urbanism and intimate brushes with everyday life, the artists offer keen observations, commentaries, and sometimes even deconstructions of contemporary culture and society through their artworks.

「INK CITY」collectively showcases the social narratives of an age marked by transition. Some stories tell the unique perspectives of Hong Kong in the twilight of the colonial era, with the city adjusting to the handover and navigating rising global tensions; other narratives take in the vast range of the Chinese diaspora and resonate with shared social experiences of gender, identity, desire, and fantasy. The exhibition celebrates the vision of artists—from different generations and of diverse backgrounds—who are united by a passionate exploration of the transformative power of art to shape ideas, sharing a desire to drive social awareness through their practice. By calling attention to this potential to engage with social issues and encourage awareness of untold stories, 「INK CITY」underlines the dynamism and breadth of what ink art can be.

Gallery address: JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun, Central

Pierfrancesco Celada, Cheung Choi Sang, Elpis Chow, Fung Kuen Suet Michelle, Vivian Ho, Tobe Kan Kiu Sin, Kinchoi Lam, Jay Lau, Lau Wai, Lo Lai Lai Natalie, Lung Yuet Ching, Shum Kwan Yi, Stephanie Sin, Tom Chung Man

The Unsung invites 14 Hong Kong–based artists to closely observe their surroundings during COVID-19 and select a particular person or group who have been highly affected by the pandemic and yet have nevertheless persevered. The artists then conducted further research or personal interviews, and each created an artwork that brings to light the unique experiences or conditions of the unsung. From medical staff to flight attendants, sustainable volunteers to art administrators, human rights and social workers and food delivery riders to local farmers, The Unsung covers a wide range of subjects with a variety of mediums—including painting, drawing, photography, print, ceramics, video, and even process art. The project attempts to contemplate some recent life journeys through an artistic lens and to create resonances among people from all walks of life.

After the run of the exhibition, the artists will gift the artworks to their unsung heroes in homage to their resilience, which also gave rise to the project’s Chinese title—「韌生」(ngan6 sang1, meaning ‘resilient lives’).

Wet feet __ dry feet: borders and games gathers for the first time in Hong Kong important recent works by Francis Alÿs, one of the most influential conceptual artists of our time. Structured around the artist’s interest in migration, borders, and his fascination with children’s games from around the world, this solo exhibition highlights Francis Alÿs’s poetic, imaginative sensibility, anchored by geopolitical concerns and individual will while being grounded in everyday life.

The title of the exhibition was the spark to Alÿs’s works in this exhibition: “Wet Feet, Dry Feet” refers to the US policy on Cuban refugees in 1995. Under this policy, Cuban migrants headed for the United States faced vastly different treatment depending on whether they were intercepted at sea or on land, on US soil. If intercepted at sea (“wet feet”), they would be repatriated back to Cuba; if intercepted on land (“dry feet”), they would be allowed to stay in the United States. For a Hong Kong audience, this might sound uncannily familiar: the “Touch Base” policy in 1970s Hong Kong meant that Mainland Chinese migrants would be sent back to the Mainland if intercepted at sea or in the New Territories; only if they reached south of Boundary Street—the formal boundary between Kowloon and the New Territories—were migrants allowed to stay legally in the territory (in the quirky British sports reference, “touch base”).