What is it like to be an animal? Artist duo based in Hong Kong take people on journeys through the senses of bats and buffaloes
- Zheng Mahler’s recent exhibition at PHD Group in Causeway Bay prompts a sensory shift from a visual to a sonic world to understand the lives of bats
- A previous work was based on the hearing of Lantau Island’s free-roaming water buffaloes and how the animals navigate and terraform the landscape
To most people, the name Zheng Mahler likely conjures up an image of a German-Chinese man. But in fact, it is the name of not one, but two people.
Royce Ng and Daisy Bisenieks together form an artist duo that creates research-based multimedia installations rooted in fields like anthrozoology – the study of human-animal relationships – and the interactions between nature and technology.
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, but based on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island since 2013, Ng and Bisenieks have exhibited works around the world, including at UCCA Dune in Qinhuangdao, in China’s Hebei province; the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany; and at Performa 15, a performance art biennale in New York.
In their adopted city, they have shown works at Tai Kwun and at the non-profit art space Para Site, but they have never presented a solo exhibition at a commercial gallery – until recently.
Titled “What is it like to be a (virtual) bat?”, the show at PHD Group in Causeway Bay invites its audience to step inside the shoes – or rather, wings – of a bat, taking viewers on a psychedelic journey that traverses the trees and streets of Mui Wo, on the eastern coast of Lantau.
The pair took on the name Zheng Mahler as an alias in 2014, after they were commissioned for a sensitive research project by the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, about trade between Africa and Asia.