Hong Kong heritage and cultural complex opens with art by Southeast Asian social activists
- Malaysian artist collective Pangrok Sulap highlights Hong Kong’s marginalised artisans in show at The Mills in Tsuen Wan
- Exhibition of Southeast Asian art marks the launch of Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile at the complex, housed in former cotton mills
The volunteers bopped to the beat of Pangrok Sulap’s own folk music and used their feet to create a banner from one of the woodcuts covered in ink on the floor of the centre’s three-storey glass atrium.
Six eight-metre-long vertical scrolls made earlier from woodcuts were hanging around the atrium, catching the eyes of the crowd that had come to see the new space, whose opening is one of the highlights of Hong Kong’s art month, which culminates in the annual Art Basel art fair.
The images on the scrolls were inspired by Pangrok Sulap’s visits to the Yen Chow Street fabric market in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district – soon to be demolished – and to the 72-year-old Chi Kee Sawmill and Timber, a business threatened by the development of the northeastern New Territories.
Members of the collective also spoke to former textile factory workers still living in The Mills’ neighbourhood. A defiant ribbon of text in Chinese and English runs through them: “Our Life”, “Our Culture”, “This is our Land”.