At Helsinki Biennial, Hong Kong artists capture zeitgeist of a world in flux, where opposing values collide and rules can be tossed aside

Hong Kong’s ‘So Long, Thanks Again For The Fish’ art exhibition in Finland is a playful take on global worries, with an underlying solemnity and melancholy

It is also the latest reminder that the rest of the world is increasingly waking up to the quality and variety of the work of the city’s artists

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Detail from Apart-House (2021) by Lam Tung-pang, part of “So long, thanks again for the fish”, Hong Kong’s contribution to the Helsinki Biennial. Photo: Sheung Yiu

Published: 12:45pm, 25 Jul 2021Updated: 12:45pm, 25 Jul 2021

Fans of the satirical The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sci-fi series by Douglas Adams will instantly recognise the title of a Hong Kong art exhibition in Finland.

“So Long, Thanks Again For The Fish” invokes the parting shot from all the dolphins as they abandon earth and species of lesser intelligence, such as humans, before the planet’s annihilation by aliens. The Cantonese name of the show is less final, less of an echo of the current exodus from Hong Kong. Taken from a Stephen Chow Sing-chi comedy, it means: “You want to say goodbye? Not so fast!”

The comic tone is a contrast to the heaviness that has enshrouded Hong Kong over the past two years. But behind the elements of playfulness in the exhibition are a solemn ritual of mourning and a fervent prayer for rebirth.

The Douglas Adams reference is an apt one, for the global pandemic drives home the fact that nature can outsmart and overcome the human race. It also fits the overall theme of the Helsinki Biennial – of which the exhibition is part – “The Same Sea”; the biennial proposes that humankind faces the same connected fate because of climate change and other overwhelming challenges.

Flag Day (2021) by Luke Ching. Photo: Sheung Yiu

We may all be in “the same sea” but Hong Kong and Finland seem like polar opposites, and cultural exchanges between the two are rare.

However, Koon Yeewan, chairwoman of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Hong Kong, met the team behind the Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP) when she was co-curating the Gwangju Biennial in 2018. The team from the Finnish non-profit art institution were impressed by the works of Hong Kong artists that Koon had selected for that biennial, such as Luke Ching Chin-wai’s Region of Failed Flags, made with rejected flag designs for the newly set-up Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997.