Artists respond to Hong Kong’s ‘new normal’ in a flurry of shows

Leung Chi-wo explores what home means to Hongkongers, Jasmine Cheung takes over a street-side display window

A pop-up show in a stripped out shop space is a flirtation with ‘unwarranted time and space, fuelled by an infatuation with impermanence’

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Artist Leung Chi-wo sitting in a hotel room at Eaton HK where his new exhibition "Home and Nonhome" is partially staged. Photo: Jockey Club New Arts Power

Published: 4:15pm, 20 Nov 2020Updated: 4:48pm, 20 Nov 2020

Artists and art galleries have kept busy this year despite the persistence of Covid-19, and events are reaching a crescendo as the end of the year approaches.

Despite the announcement that Art Basel Hong Kong will be delayed until May 2021, 22 galleries are taking part in “Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel”, a mini art fair held in collaboration with Fine Art Asia 2020 from November 26 to 30. Meanwhile, from November 24 an exhibition at the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery of the City University of Hong Kong, called “Art Machines: Past / Present”, will feature art made using machines by 34 local artists.

Several smaller exhibitions are of particular interest for those who want to understand Hong Kong’s special qualities and how local artists are responding to the city’s “new normal”.

1. Leung Chi-wo: Home and Nonhome, Eaton HK, 380 Nathan Road, Yau Ma Tei. Until December 11

Back in 2004-6, Leung Chi-wo asked 30 Hongkongers what they thought of their homes and recorded their monologues. These recordings were used in a 2007 exhibition called Open Home (Hong Kong), which was staged inside someone’s flat. Now you can hear them again inside a hotel room, a context which is half private, half public and half home, half foreign.

An installation in the adjoining room features a new video based on conversations with young students about to leave Hong Kong to study abroad. Their idea of home is notably broader and more conceptual than that heard in the original monologues.