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Hong Kong may be basking in the klieg light of its global art moment, with the opening of Tai Kwun, the long-delayed M+ museum, the currently under-renovation Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, and the arrival of David Zwirner and Iwan Wirth for the recent openings of their respective inaugural galleries in Asia at the H Queen’s art tower in Central. But the Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC) in Wan Chai, which opened in 1977, shines like the proverbial jewel in the crown on the city’s artistic and cultural landscape. Where else in the 1980s in this tall, small and rapaciously commercial city could any budding aesthete have seen L’Avventura by Italian avant-garde cinematic maestro Michelangelo Antonioni, Last Year at
Marienbad by Alain Resnais or Dekalog by Krzysztof Kieslowski? And what other venue was staging contemporary conceptual artwork by Hong Kong artists – there was only a small theatre in Wong Tai Sin for the performing arts – at a time when few people knew what the term meant or represented? Wan Chai Grammatica: Past,
Present, Future Tense is the flagship exhibition of the HKAC’s 40th anniversary, and it wears its intensity, intimacy and intent like a love letter to the place, grounded in the local community who were (and still are) its lifeblood. “The history of the HKAC is so seminal to the Hong Kong art scene,” says curator, writer, translator and Chinese art expert Valerie Doran. “A lot of the artists that were in the HKAC 1985 show, like conceptual artist Choi Yan-chi [whose work can be seen at the exhibition], have actually mentored a lot of the local artists in Wan Chai Grammatica.”
The exhibition, which runs until November 4, is a celebration of the city’s identity as seen through one of Hong Kong’s most iconic districts: Wan Chai. Doran has assembled artists from different generations, backgrounds, and national origins across diverse genres and mediums, including some newly commissioned works. “One thing we’ve really achieved in the show is that the different voices of the artists come together, reflecting the grammar and a sense of place,” she says.
The work is substantial – and often challenging. There’s the “always exuberant bon vivant” Luis Chan, though his work does have a dark side, cautions Doran. Asked to single out other exciting works on show, she names Jaffa Lam, Phoebe Hui and Mark Chan, whose creations are “playful, but with a deeper dimension as well”.
Poignancy is much in evidence and “none of the works are simplistic at all,” says Doran. She calls Chu Hing-wah’s
The Old Lady’s Great Love “touching – it is caring and loving, and what most people see as pitiful, he sees as devotion. His work is uplifting, but not exuberant.” And there’s Xyza Cruz Bacani, the Filipina street photographer and daughter of a helper who grew up with a camera, taking shots of her Wan Chai neighbourhood. Bacani is one of the Magnum Foundation’s Human Rights fellows, and has claimed a spot on the lists of the BBC’s 100 Women of the
World and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia.
“She’s very authentic in the reality; she doesn’t try to make it pretty, but you sense her engagement very strongly in her photographs,” says Doran. “There is a compassion to her gaze.”
Doran draws interesting parallels between the work of Yeung Tong-lung and Firenze Lai. “Yeung’s painting installation is based on the view from his workshop, from which he brings this whole world,” she says. “But it’s a microcosm because he’s so attentive to all the little people, only in that moment. Lai’s work is emotional in a more direct way. She wants to illuminate difficulty, a sense of displacement, the challenge of life. And in many ways, the artists’ works represent two sides of the same coin.”
Interestingly, Choi Yan-chi channels Antonioni, having read an essay by the filmmaker. “She found his writing pertinent to her and her art,” explains Doran. “He framed the experience of how artists take everything in, all of their surroundings, as inspiration in their work – much like Choi.”
Lastly, Doran singles out Ho Sin-tung’s work, based on the Sisters of St Paul de Chartres, who settled in Wan Chai and founded an orphanage in the mid-19th century. “The name of the artwork,
One Thousand and One Moons, is so meaningful,” she says. “It references the round shape of the silver coins paid for 1,000 of the girls rescued from the streets by the sisters and the one extra moon represents the artist herself, bearing witness to their story. It’s so beautiful.”
Which could be an alternate tagline for Grammatica’s past, present and future tense, and the striking syntactical and aesthetic sense it makes.