What Does Modern Hong Kong Have in Common with Beijing’s Forbidden City?

Description

Blockbuster thematic exhibitions across the globe increasingly feel curated with Instagram in mind, and Hong Kong’s cultural institutions have been uncharacteristically prompt to the party (Exhibit A: the long, long queues to pose with big, big chopsticks at M+’s Design Ah! family-friendly summer spectacle). Gallery goers looking to freshen up their feeds won’t be disappointed by this intriguing new exhibition of homegrown creativity, at the neighbouring Hong Kong Palace Museum, which is bursting with snappable installations to be shared wide and far. 

In the opening room guests confront a mandarin’s long, bureaucratic desk, which might entice even the most iron-hearted art snob to take a seat, and pose. It’s almost too easy to miss the sextet of monochrome marker pen sketches that flank the back wall — half detailing Beijing’s Forbidden City, the exhibition’s guiding theme, and the other half depicting the more modest surrounds of a Yau Ma Tei public resting spot. The whole room is the work of Kasing Lung, one of nine emerging Hong Kong artists selected by curator Grace Cheng to participate in Day in the City ─ An Experimental Study of Things Across Time, a multidisciplinary show drawing unlikely parallels between Ming-dynasty officialdom and modern-day Hong Kong.

Instantly Instagrammable highlights include three room-sized mixed media installations. Centred around a row of rocks, Seth Hon’s Anatomy of Chronolith sees three walls projected with dancing colours, apparently based on local meteorological data and algorithms, allowing visitors to create their own Deerhoof-style photoshoot. Li Chi Tak’s A Big Small Yard sees all four walls of another room covered in nostalgic, moving monochrome comic sketches. In the hypnotic Chaconne of the City, Fung Lam distils a 12-hour period in the city into a meditative, 29-minute loop that feels like a day has passed.

Static but no less subtle is Kila Cheung’s Young Bike King, inspired by the cycling obsession of China’s child-aged last emperor, Puyi, while Benny To Kai On also engages directly with the subject material, with a series of 3D-printed sculptures (pictured above) inspired by historical architectural designs and semi-mythical traditional futures.