FORGET THE DRAGON, the junks and the Victoria Harbour skyline. Hong Kong is to get a global image makeover at this year's Venice Biennale as a city of destruction, magic and talking parrots.
The Star Fairy project - selected by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ADC) to represent the city at the international arts jamboree in June - sets out to examine what Hong Kong means to the global community and to question why it should be part of this big event at all.
'Why does Hong Kong really want to go to Venice?' asks project curator Norman Ford. 'Is this the best way to generate cachet and respect for Hong Kong culture - for others to see Hong Kong as having a high level of culture, with only a few people benefiting?'
Only seven local artists and curators, and an 11-member artist collective, have exhibited at the biennale, according to the ADC, which made its Venice debut in 2001. The public gets to see a scaled-down version of the shows afterwards at the Hong Kong Art Biennial organised by the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Ford, a lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an art reviewer for the Post, says Star Fairy sets out to question how the show will represent Hong Kong and its visual art community and how their participation at the Venice Biennale will promote, identify and represent Hong Kong abroad. The challenging task of coming up with works that can represent the city falls to artists Amy Cheung Wan-man, MAP Office - a collaborative studio created by Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix - and Hiram To.
London-educated Cheung picks up on the Star Ferry pun to present Devil's Advocate, which she describes as an effort 'to reflect on and reconcile opposites'.