Samson Young, sound artist, picked to represent Hong Kong at 2017 Venice Biennale
UPDATED: M+ Museum of Visual Culture, which made the announcement with Hong Kong Arts Development Council, picks independent curator for Hong Kong pavilion after controversy over its curatorial role at recent biennales
Samson Young will represent Hong Kong at the 2017 Venice Biennale, the Arts Development Council and the M+ Museum of Visual Culture announced on Thursday.
Young, born in Hong Kong in 1979, trained as a musician and holds a PhD in composition from Princeton University. In recent years, his blending of sounds with visual art and live performance has enjoyed much international success. He was the inaugural winner of the Art Basel-BMW Art Journey Award last year and won a place in this year’s Container Artist Residency, a programme which involves a group of selected artists making art on a container ship sailing around the world.
For whom the bell tolls is one of his best-known works. This is a project started in 2015 that has him travelling around the world and making recordings of bells as a way to understand the history of conflicts.
The 2017 Venice Biennale, which opens in May, will be the third at which the ADC and M+ work together to present Hong Kong’s contribution to the world’s biggest contemporary art event.
The ADC says the arrangement makes sense because M+ has a lot of curatorial and logistical resources. But some art practitioners have criticised the museum, whose permanent home is under construction in the West Kowloon Cultural District, for excluding independent voices from what is the most important international showcase of Hong Kong art. Perhaps to address such concerns, M+ has named Kwok Ying, an independent Hong Kong curator, as guest curator for Young’s exhibition.