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Still in Transition: 20 Years After Hong Kong’s Handover
Twenty years have passed since the fateful day when Hong Kong ceased being a British colony. Since July 1, 1997, the reunion of Hong Kong with mainland China has been fraught with controversy, fueling social, cultural and political friction within the port city. And yet, as ArtAsiaPacific contributing editor Antony Dapiran pointed out in the latest issue, two decades of debates and actions surrounding identity and collective memory have been a catalyst for the city’s artists and cultural figures, sustaining their creative endeavors. Artists and art spaces of many ilks have responded to the 20th anniversary of the British-Chinese handover. ArtAsiaPacific’s editorial interns have provided a roundup of four exhibitions that take the event as a springboard to stage timely exhibitions, ranging from the documentarian to fantastical, imaginary reinterpretations of Hong Kong’s past and future.
Visual Dialogues: Hong Kong through the Lens of Fan Ho
Jun 14 – 30
Presented in conjunction with the publication of Portrait of Hong Kong, a photographic monograph and the last project Ho Fan worked on before his death in 2016, the selling exhibition “Visual Dialogues: Hong Kong through the Lens of Fan Ho” was mounted at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery to lead up to the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, showcasing 32 silver gelatin, award-winning photographic prints signed by the master himself. Best known for shooting quintessential street-life of post-war Hong Kong, Ho reminded viewers of its “good old days” during the 1950s and 1960s with his documentarian black-and-white vintage photographs.
A highlight of the show is Approaching Shadow (1954), arguably Ho’s most famous photograph. The image earned the photographer and filmmaker 51 international awards and sold for HK$375,000 (US$48,000) at an auction hosted by Bonhams in Hong Kong in 2015. Taken at Queen’s College, the image depicts a woman wearing a modern qipao, leaning against a wall of the school, standing within a quiet composition where light and shadow strike a balance. In As Evening Hurries By (1955)— the print that the artist confessed he “would want to be remembered by”—a lone man pushes a heavy cart along the city’s famed waterfront, perhaps still with a long way to go.
31 June 1997
Jun 30 – Jul 30
Videotage, Hong Kong
Installation view of “31 June 1997” at Videotage, Hong Kong, 2017.
Videotage presented a project by artist and historian David Clarke that was based on the invention of a fictional “independence day” in which Hong Kong was under neither British nor Chinese sovereignty. Titled “31 June 1997,” the name alludes to the imaginary day between the last day of British rule and the first day of Chinese rule in Hong Kong.
The exhibition presented two videos and a collection of prints by Clarke, with additional contributions by two artists: Oscar Ho Hing-kay’s sequence of mixed media works on paper and Xu Xi’s short fiction story The Transubstantiation of the Ants, presented as wall text. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a looped, slow-motion video of road passage across the border that separates Hong Kong and Shenzhen. With audio recordings of interviews conducted by Clarke about the fragrant harbor’s transfer of sovereignty playing in the background, visitors are offered an hour and 15 minutes of continuous travel footage without direct reference to the departure point—Hong Kong—or the destination, Shenzhen, which we never arrive at.
Curated by Isaac Leung, the exhibition touches upon other interconnected topics, such as memory and false memory syndrome, spatial and temporal liminality, independence, autonomy and identity.
20 Year Hong Kong Handover
Jul 1 – 31
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong
One of the photographs shown on the Van Es Photo Wall for the exhibition “20 Year Hong Kong Handover” at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, 2017. Photo by Crystal Wu for ArtAsiaPacific.
Mounted in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club’s main bar, the wall exhibition “20 Year Hong Kong Handover” featured photos taken on the eve and the day of July 1, 1997, by various photographers and journalists, including World Press Photo of the Year winner Robin Moyer. The photographs present a diverse cast—representatives of the British and Chinese governments, members of domestic political bodies such as the April 5th Action group and the Democratic Party, Chinese and British troops, and officers who were part of the Hong Kong Police Force—in moments that were celebratory for some but bitter for others. Photos taken in 1989 when students in Beijing congregated in Tiananmen Square, and during the Umbrella Revolution, which happened a quarter of a century later, were also featured beside the main wall exhibition, charting the timeline of Hong Kong’s path since the fateful handover. Beneath the framed photographs was a banner showing archival images of journalists who were based in Hong Kong, each distinguished by the gear they were equipped with, linking the photo exhibition to its venue.
Desiring: Post 97 Hong Kong Ink Art
Jul 6 – Aug 31
Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong
Alisan Fine Arts presented a group exhibition, “Desiring: Post 97 Hong Kong Ink Art,” to mark two decades of Hong Kong’s status as a Special Administrative Region. The show wove together local ink art created before and after 1997, tracing the footsteps of Hong Kong’s ink art reformation since the 1960s. Among the artists whose works were shown, Fang Zhaoling and TC Lai borrowed Western styles and expressed them in familiar ink compositions. Lui Shou Kwan and Wucius Wong, who were pioneers of the New Ink Painting movement, incorporated Western modernism in their abstract paintings.
Man Fung Yi and Kum Chi Keung, who experienced the handover in their early adulthood, retain a traditional Chinese aesthetic but offer a fresh touch: In Bonsai 11 (2017), Kum shaped stainless steel into the recognizable form of a birdcage and carved pine trees on four sides. Man Fung Yi used incense sticks to burn holes through silk, recalling the process of embroidery via the patterns left behind. Compared with post-war artists, whose fate was dominated by political upheaval, young artists who grew up in times of peace enjoy more opportunities to reach the global stage. In the works of Cheuk Ka-wai, Ho Kwun-ting, Hui Hoi-kiu and Zhang Xiaoli, there are diverse forms, images and themes that address contemporary social conditions and personal emotions, drawing our attention toward New Ink.
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