A Realm With No Co-ordinates
1a space, Cattle Depot Art Village, To Kwa Wan
Reviewed: August 26
This collection of photographs, videos and installations are the result of a rare, complex and ambitious collaboration between Hong Kong and Taiwanese artists, curators and writers. Using discussion forums, exhibitions and conferences, the project questions the relationships between the two visual art scenes, and how they might relate to, or move beyond, the dominance of mainland Chinese art internationally.
The curatorial team (led by Taiwan's Ray Pan Ta-chien, with Chen Shui-wen and Hong Kong's Jaspar Lau Kin-wah) seems to be interested in a complementary, rather than confrontational, relationship with mainland art. More importantly, they're concerned with the marginalisation of Hong Kong and Taiwan due to the popularity of the latter.
The curatorial strategy is admirable and unusual in its attempts to depart from one of the qualities that has made mainland art successful overseas: its ethnic and national Chineseness. This leads to having to define what Hong Kong or Taiwanese art might be, especially in relation to the mainland. Paradoxically, the curators try to transcend this uncertainty in the very name of the project - but with some questions unexamined.