Hong Kong artists reflect on life in the 20 years since Chinese rule over city resumed

In “Tale of the Wonderland” at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong artists reflect on the 20 years since the city returned to Chinese rule, an experience the exhibition compares to Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

One of the most powerful works in the group show is Sarah Lai’s White Glove (2017). It is a simple, yet perfect encapsulation of how Hong Kong people feel about a different queen: Britain’s Elizabeth II.

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The tilt of the waving hand in a white glove immediately brings to mind the queen’s standard greeting to the hoi polloi. It is also an ambiguous gesture, either saying hello, or waving goodbye. It seems friendly, but the white glove demands that distance is kept. As Lai explains it, the gloved hand is a symbol of the hypocrisy of colonialism, and her painting a satire of some Hongkongers’ idealised nostalgia for British rule.

Nearly all of the eight artists represented in the exhibition seem to think Hong Kong’s future is none too bright. Lam Tung-pang revisited a self-portrait on wood panels called Folding, completed 10 years ago when he was studying in the UK. In the original, he held out his hands as if he was holding something but there was only empty air, a symbol of the uncertainty he felt about being an artist in Britain.

The 2017 version, called Re-Folding, is nearly identical, except he is now holding a big hole in his hands and there are drill marks all over the wooden panels. The holes stand for “the bottomless voids accumulated in a decade of emptiness”. Being back in his hometown doesn’t take away the sense of uncertainty.

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South Ho Siu-nam, a young artist who took haunting black-and-white photos of empty Hong Kong streets during the Occupy Central 2014 protests, takes a more lighthearted approach. A wooden table sits in the middle of the gallery, its two halves joined together, but like Hong Kong and China, not quite in alignment.