AS ARTISTIC high jinks go, Oscar Ho Hing-kay's Hong Kong Reincarnated project is masterful. Thousands who visited a series of exhibitions Ho curated from 1998 to 1999 at the Hong Kong Arts Centre were led to believe that the Danka fishing people, some of Hong Kong's earliest settlers, were descendants of the Lo Ting, a tribe of half-fish, half-man creatures. Backed by meticulously designed explanatory texts and seemingly genuine historical documentation, Ho and his colleagues proclaimed the Lo Ting as ancestors of all Hongkongers.
Ho beams with pride about his fictional character Lo Ting and remembers with glee the way visitors argued among themselves about their so-called 'findings'. 'If they were to believe everything we said in the exhibition, I'd be terribly disappointed. What I wanted to see was them leaving the exhibition in a state of confusion and doubt,' he says.
Far from being just a hoax writ large, the project is an attempt to deconstruct mythology and illustrate the collective hysteria prevalent in Hong Kong. The same goes for a series of paintings Ho created, Stories Around Town, which illustrate urban myths that circulated in Hong Kong in the 1990s - such as ghosts in advertisements or government cover-ups over deadly epidemics. 'I started out fabricating stuff myself - but as I went on I found that there were so many absurd tales out there, there was no need for me to make things up.'
More of Ho's work can be seen at Mapping Identities, an exhibition which celebrates his career as a witty, innovative artist and curator. Although he has been in art for nearly 30 years, Mapping Identities is his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong: he refused to have one here during his tenure as exhibition director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre - which lasted from 1988 to 2001 - to avoid a conflict of interest.
Better later than never. The show is a visual feast, as Ho's best moments are placed into Para/Site's small gallery space in Sheung Wan. While some might argue that Ho's sizeable canon deserves more space and grandeur, Ho revels in the way his exhibition stands on the margins - both geographically and also in the context of Hong Kong's art scene.
'I always aim for the intimate when I create work - grand shows never suited me well,' he says. 'I'm really happy and proud to be on the peripheries. I've been inside the establishment, and now I know I feel much more comfortable when I'm outside it.'
After his long spell at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and his two-year stint as a researcher for the Culture and Heritage Commission - the body set up by the government to look into the possibilities for a coherent cultural policy in Hong Kong - Ho knows what it feels like to be an outsider on the inside. A graduate of the University of California, at Davis, Ho is a firm believer in the ethos behind the subversive stream of Funk Art: that art should always possess an element of fun and also a connection with society in general.