Chinese artists felt so let down by Hong Kong television, they made their own sitcom
- Guangzhou-based art collective Boloho’s series, based on their members’ real-life pandemic struggles, is being screened at Hong Kong’s Hanart TZ Gallery
- It is part of a two-month exhibition that gives an interesting insight into the Greater Bay Area art scene and its relationship with Hong Kong
A group of artists in China’s sprawling southern city of Guangzhou felt so let down by the slipped standard of Hong Kong television that they made their own sitcom and brought it to the city.
The series, currently being screened at Hanart TZ Gallery in Kwai Chung, certainly gives the conservative and formulaic programmes that dominate local television a run for their money. Its upbeat title, Bolohope, comes from Boloho, the Cantonese name of the artists’ four-year-old collective, which means the core of a pineapple.
This edible and highly nutritious part of the fruit is too often discarded and underappreciated, an apt symbol for a group practice focused on uncovering values and relationships disregarded by patriarchal and capitalist models.
The Bolohope project was commissioned for 2022’s Documenta 15, one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in the world, held every five years in Germany.
