Artists wrestle with split identity in Hong Kong shows, and find resonance with city’s own struggle
- ‘The same urge to split from a body is resonating in the different places I have links with,’ says Mandy El-Sayegh, whose father is Arab and her mother Chinese
- Christopher K. Ho’s installation considers Hong Kong’s fate as a place caught between empires
Hong Kong, struggling to find its identity amid a crescendo of protests, is a stimulating backdrop for two exhibitions of art that explores what it means to straddle cultures and nationalities.
Mandy El-Sayegh, a 34-year-old artist based in London, is having her first Asia show in the city, which has been wracked by violent clashes over a proposed law change that would allow Hongkongers to be extradited to jurisdictions including mainland China. The tension between parts and the whole in her art finds striking resonance in the tension between the city and its motherland.
“Dispersal”, her exhibition at Lehmann Maupin’s Hong Kong gallery, includes a number of large mixed-media paintings reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines”, laden with symbols taken from popular culture, the media and references to personal history.
These are hung on walls covered from floor to ceiling with copies of the South China Morning Post – a visual representation of the macro environment that shapes individual identities.
Nothing is explicit, leaving plenty of room for those who see it to find fragments of their own world.
