Beyond the ‘Concrete Jungle’ Cliché: HK as an Interconnected Garden

Description

Skyscrapers. Busy streets. The proverbial “concrete jungle.” You may associate Hong Kong with these tropes, but our glorious, restless metropolis also has another facet. Verdant mountains, idyllic coastlines and rich ecologies. With this backdrop, Garden Whisperers: Attuning to Ecologies of Coexistence features 13 Asian artists Florence Yuk-ki Lee, Liao Jiaming and Timur Si-Qin, whose practices navigate often overlooked dimensions of coexistence, reimagining the conditions of city and nature.

Amid urgent ecological challenges, Garden Whisperers reimagines Hong Kong as an interconnected garden shaped by multiple forms of life, opening imaginative possibilities for a more sustainable future.

An award-winning project from the Hart Curatorship Incubation Programme and curated by art and curatorial researcher Mankit Lai, the exhibition transforms Hart Haus into a night garden. Taking the garden as both metaphor and site, it invites visitors to wander a nocturnal landscape and attune to the subtle relationships that sustain coexistence among people, animals and plants.

Spanning two gallery spaces and the terrace garden, the show unfolds across five interconnected sections — Garden Gate, Beacons, Hang-Out, Deep in the Nexus and In the Field — each exploring adaptation, conflict, community, resilience, collaboration and interdependence. Through a wide gamut of artistic media like installations, moving image and sculpture, the artists interweave life’s quiet whispers, proposing a post-urban vision that moves beyond human-centred perspectives.