Wayfarer of Fire: A Promethean Group Show

Description

Fire is a contrary beast — at once an essential giver of light, and an untameable destroyer of life. It is rightly feared and revered — kindled and captured. Its spirit has fascinated thinkers since the days of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods of Olympians to aid humanity’s ascent, the mythical Greek titan around which Kiang Malingue has themed its ambitious new group show, Wayfarer of Fire. The artists here alternately collect, carry, guard, watch and fear the flame. 

American performer-composer Meredith Monk makes primordial noises with her voice — largely wordless exaltations which carry the pains and strains of generations. The only discernible word in her 1981 piece “Education of the Girlchild: Biography” is “dying.” This incantation soundtracks the horror of Ellen Pau’s Blue (1989–90), a single-channel video collage contrasting Hong Kong’s urban textures with violent World War II and Gulf War imagery, in silent protest at the unthinkable, the unsayable. As a counterweight, Samson Young’s video We Are the World, installation documents the anthemic global charity single of the same name, as performed by Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, a pro-Beijing labour and political group established in Hong Kong in 1948.

These two bold  video art pioneer’s bold statements sit at the heart of this big-name, media-crossing exhibition, which also collects works from Brook Hsu, Kwan Sheung Chi, Lai Chih-Sheng, Phillip Lai and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 

The spirit of cinema is close at hand in this collective reckoning with heat. Kwan Sheun Chi’s video work Before the End: Les Quatre Cents Coups recasts the closing scene of François Truffaut’s legendary French New Wave debut on the waterside pavements of Hong Kong, that iconic skyline inevitably hovering in the background. Brook Hsu’s soothing canvas “Pasolini Seven Times” spells out seminal Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s name seven times, in moody blue hues.

Best known as the arthouse auteur behind works such as 2010 Palm d’Or-winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives — and a celebrity champion of local songwriter and sound artist Olivier Cong — Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul pays more direct tribute to the blazing imagination of his primary medium in static works, including “On Blue” (2025, pictured). Ashen traces mark sandpaper in Lai Chih-Sheng’s “One day, you will leave here” (2019) bids, while an absence of fire meanwhile defines Phillip Lai’s central installation Untitled (Hypnos) (2023), featuring a hypnotic clockwork lighthouse and a siren heard in silence.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday 10 September, 18:00 to 20:00.