Art in Camouflage
“Reversing Horizons” – Reflections on the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Exhibition
Chang Tsong-zung
Hong Kong contemporary art is not just unfamiliar to outsiders, it is also a side show somewhat overlooked at home. Over time contemporary art has quietly claimed for itself a zone of reflection that, since the 80s, has developed a cultural character attuned to contemporary life. It is not possible to discuss Hong Kong without bringing in mainland China, but contemporary art is precisely the area where the two regions do not appear to find common ground, neither in social role, creative approach nor aspiration. Nevertheless, China is an enormous shadow looming over Hong Kong, it is a distant dream and the future, and it is the Other that defines the Hong Kong self. An exhibition in Shanghai brings to light the subtle relationship between Hong Kong and its ancestor-land.
Hong Kong, like Shanghai, is an immigrant city, a metropolis shaped by colonial politics and a spearhead of Chinese modernity. It is thus understandable that for native Cantonese in Hong Kong, until the Open Policy era of late 1970s, all northerners were “Shanghai-ese”. During the decades when “Cantonese” and “Shanghai-ese” reckoned with each other to bring about “Hongkong-ese”, the mainstream in Hong Kong art concerned themselves with the master narrative of “modern China”, whether it is Lingnan School, New Ink Painting, or Zhong Yuan modern art society. When negotiations about Hong Kong’s future between Britain and China began in the 1980s, so did Hong Kong’s out-going immigration wave, forcing home the challenge to come to terms with a local Hong Kong identity. A sense of “Hongkong-ese” started to emerge. As we look today at the recent surge of nostalgia for Hong Kong life of the 1960s and 1970s, and the call for preservation of heritage highlighted by activism against demolition of “Wedding Card” street and old Star Ferry, it is clear that a local sense of community and identity is in place. Contemporary art post-1997 has a distinct sense of locality and indigenous history, and it shows a special sensibility in dealing with the increasingly commercialised and regulated daily life among the already restricted public spaces of Hong Kong.
If public nostalgia illustrates Hong Kong’s sense of identity, then it was public protest marches that first made room for nostalgia. Hong Kong’s collective identity came with an assertion of public will, in particular the several major city-wide protest marches, that erupted in the past two decades. Having said this, it is important to qualify by saying that Hong Kong as a developed metropolis is particularly weak in political consciousness. Politics is dominated by businessmen (especially developers) and bureaucrats; there are no statesmen to speak of (aspiring politicians, perhaps). Economic logic dominates local politics. While Hong Kong identity is anchored by protest marches, its collective public life is shaped by totally un-political forces. It is the tidal wave of the speculative market, of property and stocks and shares, that periodically rocks the city to euphoria or depression like seasonal festivals elsewhere. In art, the lack of public life has the effect of marginalising art with a public angle, making it difficult for ideologically motivated art to work its way into the fabrics of local culture with any depth. In facing the realities of life, art as a tool for critical thinking tends to focus on the regulated controls and the ideological agenda hidden in daily life.
Opening at MOCA Shanghai on 8 July 2007, the exhibition Reversing Horizons takes the reflection of Hong Kong artists on the handover anniversary as the theme. Several works in this exhibition bring together the two cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Leung Chi-wo’s (Suck+Blow) x 4 was photographed in Shanghai four years ago in 2003, long before any prospects for exhibitions, which illustrates Hong Kong’s secret fascination with Shanghai. Leung took pin-hole photographs of the sky of Shanghai showing tips of buildings; by drawing the images in and out from the four surrounding sides in a breathing rhythm, he simulates a physical experience of the heavens of Shanghai. His other work in the exhibition is about interpretation; by looking at how Hong Kong businessmen translate names of corporations between English and Chinese, it exposes the city’s inner passion for gain. Without irony, unabashedly the gods of profit are engraved on the tenant’s directory panel in the foyer of commercial buildings. Chen Chin-wai’s Shanghai Street Photo Studio uses an apartment as the black-box to photograph a pin-hole image of Hong Kong’s Shanghai Street. Hong Kong dedicates many streets to major cities of China, just as Shanghai names its streets by Chinese provinces. Vision evoked by the name is here overlaid by a physical image seen through its own resident black-box; the double mental image shows the incongruity of ways a distant place may be imagined, especially when viewed in Shanghai. Palimpsest of space and time again forms Chen’s Family Pinhole in Hong Kong Park. Today it is rare for Hong Kong families to visit public parks on weekends, and Chen celebrates families making the visit with a 3 minute exposure pin-hole camera photography. Instead of the usual passivity imposed on photographed subjects, the 3 minutes of stillness turn the family into actors on the stage of the park as they present themselves to the world passing by. Public spaces such as parks were introduced to China in the early decades of the 20th century when the Republic embarked on its modernisation programme, and it was an important centre of modern life serving both political and cultural functions, acknowledging equal citizen rights. In Hong Kong this important public space is being swallowed up by new commercial spaces: shopping centres built as spectacles, malls promising sensory stimulation of virtual experience and fashionable commodities. By contrast Shanghai People’s Park continues to serve the public as a communal space, Family Pinhole in Shanghai People’s Park not only present a view on Shanghai but also highlights the artist’s critique of Hong Kong, and exposes the expanding control of property developers over Hong Kong daily life.
Thoughts from Underground by Angela Su are two maps, of Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively. She has swapped the street names of the two cities, so that residents of either place would get confused and bemused in exploring what should have been familiar. Imagining possibilities as the reader weaves through the streets, stale memories are startled out of complacent corners. Hung Keung ‘s I Love My Country’s Sky and Eating and Growing were both made in 1997 when the artist was studying in London; from the perspective of his colonial cultural upbringing, the artist tries to imagine the emotions of nationhood. With humour he seems to articulate national love as a devotional, joyful, universal and featureless experience.
During the suspended years of waiting for “97” to arrive, the term “97” represented a terminal date for history, the arrival of a predestined historical plan. However, similarities between “97” and concepts of utopia or the historical time of revolution end here. After 1997 time has not stood still, and there has been no grand solution. But having crossed the date there is no longer any excuse for not addressing Hong Kong issues on its own terms. Zheng Bo’s two works both look back at the past, indicating the artist’s disavowal of the optimistic faith in the progress of time. Family History Textbook is based on a series of recorded interviews with his own family, through which he discovered family stories he never knew. Through this artwork he takes part in extending collective memory into the past. Kalibu Islands (a work created together with Ling Chin Tang) is a utopia story in reversal time, and a reflection on the visual memory of films. The protagonist finds herself in a place, Kalibu Islands, where time flows backwards, and an archive of film clips is being screened backwards as well. Against a world bent on going forward and getting ahead, Kalibu is about slowing down and reversing the march of “progress”. The protagonist finally decides to make this island her permanent home. The absurd logic of starting with the end result, starting with death and senility, then move backwards to the beginning, sounds like fairytale, but this is in fact precisely the logic behind historical determinism, the foundation of the fairytale that empowered the great social revolutions (mostly disastrous) of the 20th century.
Taking an equally broad canvas is Wong Chung-yu’s Garden of Eden and Ways of the World. Garden of Eden is a cold digital model of chance and human development, based on random encounters, calamities and procreation. Its cosmic vision gives a sobering view of the fragility of life and society, putting into perspective the vanities of the world. Ways of the World represents an admirable attempt to revive the possibilities of ink painting for the interactive digital era. The work paints a picture of the human world as it plays out its fortunes in the limited sphere of the globe we live in. It is interactive; digital elements come onto a screen with an ink painting of a landscape, which sets the stage for global struggle for resources and control. Taking a long historical view, the future of this world is equally sobering as the artist’s Garden of Eden, and it makes a perfect backdrop for Zheng Bo’s land of reverse time.
Hong Kong’s indigenous New Ink Painting movement that started in the 1950s is an important thread linking the territory’s cultural history. In this exhibition is included Leung Kui-ting, a pioneer who has been actively involved in the movement since the 1960s. City of Morality is an installation incorporating paintings and furniture, the solar terms are evoked as a reminder of the effects of nature on urban life. In recent decades, one of the main missions ink painting has appointed itself is to remain a relevant voice within the post industrial world. Hong Kong ink painters have made efforts in engaging various new media, in order to interpret a new cultural world increasingly less sympathetic to the spirit of “landscape” art. The effort is heroic and visionary at the same time, as the ultimate spiritual source of this art, that of a regenerative nature, has been so exploited and denigrated that today, human effort (or restraint, rather) is conversely needed for nature’s sustenance.
Around 1997, ten years ago, numerous art exhibitions were created around the historical event of Hong Kong’s political Handover. However, not many memorable works have appeared. In fact, long before that date the search for identity was already on: comparing differences between Hong Kong and mainland China, seeking out local life styles, popular culture and film, seeking a balance between the dual, yet both incomplete, heritage of East and West. Long before 1997 artists started to exploit the marginality that made them both insignificant and special; the result was a conscious move towards opacity and secrecy. Turning their marginalised social position into creative strategy, privacy served as a protective mask against the disorienting noises of an unsympathetic world and preserved the independence of personal artistic language. After 1997 contemporary art started to engage in wider social issues, and began to assume a public face. Also, importantly, through the availability of a government subsidised studio building in 1999 an art scene was initiated; from here on the awareness of an artistic community started to develop and diverse voices began to appear. For the first time in decades a clustering of artist studios appeared, thanks to the depressed real estate market during the years of the Asian financial crisis and SARS. Ambitious projects reflecting on social topics started to surface, and two artists that deserve mention are Kith Tsang Tak-ping and So Yan-kee, especially as they are not participating in the present exhibition. In 2001 Hong Kong took part officially in the Venice Biennial for the first time, and contemporary art began to engage a new audience even as local acceptance and market support were still lacking. For a major international metropolis like Hong Kong, whatever form of contemporary art forthcoming should have bearing on the understanding of global modernity as a whole; any local form of artistic production and strategy would provide essential knowledge in dealing with the complexity of contemporary life. One aspect of Hong Kong art post 1997 that deserves elaboration is the strategy of camouflage, camouflaging art within the texture of everyday life, and this is an artistic practice that echoes, and builds upon, previous experiences with privacy and personal language.
Hong Kong life is obsessed with the topic of money, people love to talk about luck and winning. Artist Pak Sheung-chuen puts coins on the street and draws with chalk flower petals around the coins, then takes daily stock of the fate of the coins. The work is Gift of Flower to Passers-by. He bets on the Mark Six lottery and chooses the numbers to compose the form of the word “win” in the lottery ticket to make Sure Win Mark Six. Witty works like this, small thoughts, are exhibited as a special weekly column in a Hong Kong daily; a collection has also appeared in book form, Odd One In: Hong Kong Diary. Only occasionally do the works appear in exhibitions proper. His topics range from society and politics, but they are never engaged front on. When Bak was invited for an exhibition in Taiwan, he studied the meeting point of the longitude and latitude of Hong Kong and Taiwan, which lies somewhere in South China, and then visited the village to ask villagers to seek naturals stones formed in the shape of Taiwan island. What Bak takes note of are invariably close at hand, his work sometimes involve no more than a shift of viewpoint, such as turning the cycle of moon into the work Feeding the Moon. For Bak and many of his peers, art production is employed as a process of self enlightenment. Lifting the mind out of habitual routine by taking a step back is their strategy for generating intuitive knowledge.
Lee Kit is a playful painter. He paints stripes on plain cloth to resemble printed tablecloths and curtains, playing on the fine difference between art and mass product. Lee uses his paintings as picnic cloth, table cloth and curtains, and records the soiling as part of the work-in-process. Identity of the art is buried among daily goods, just as Hong Kong artists bury themselves in local business life; only during exhibitions are the identities clearly defined. To hide art among daily goods alerts people to the texture and quality of our material world. Most urban dweller only understand material culture in terms of “design” and “designers”, here Lee brings a gentle reminder of the personable intimacy of art.
Tsang Kin-wah makes printed wallpaper with designs resembling 19th century Victorian patterns, when in fact they hide a riotous outburst of vulgar slang and political incorrect sayings in both English and Chinese. In Hong Kong the resistance against the regulated life of the middle class by those who refuse to be assimilated takes a tangential path, often humorously subversive; an exemplary case is the general resistance against Putonghua Mandarin by the Cantonese. Henry Chu’s TV Clock and Music of the Market draw a smile upon close inspection. It comes as a surprise to find that the fluctuation of the stock market can hide such rhythmic tunes, or to notice the current TV programme when studying the time. It makes us wonder how much unnoticed information is hidden in daily life surrounding us. Sara Tse works with familiar household things. By turning clothing into white porcelain, malleable forms are fossilised into permanent, yet fragile, objects. The everyday becomes objects of scrutiny. Like Tsang Kin-wah and Lee Kit, Sara Tse’s art draws the gaze of the audience towards the familiar to transform their experience of the world.
At a personal level, the least the cultural world can do is self enlightenment, apart from trying to pry open a space of freedom within the matrix of institutional power and ideological persuasion of all forms. Subverting daily life and customary behaviour is the short path to exposing the values embedded in product design, social behaviour and thinking pattern. As a general artistic approach, Hong Kong artists’ tendency to slip out of nationalistic narratives, side-stepping cultural and political discourses of all description, points to openness. For the new generation, transforming regulated life through the intimacy of the everyday, and excavate hidden wit and inspiration in the mundane have become a widely accepted strategy.
The making of a cultural identity is both an external and internal affair, it takes both the gaze of the Other as well as discourses within oneself to arrive at the complexity that makes understanding and artistic production possible. Since 1997 Hong Kong has seen the new beginnings of a contemporary art scene, and the stage is set for bringing together not just internal dialogue but also worthwhile international discourse. From artworks made available for the present exhibition it is clear that not only can we speak of a “Hong Kong” art, it also represents an important voice that responds sensitively to the uncertain modern world we all live in.
