Giant LED facade of Hong Kong’s M+ museum breaks down, Indian artist Nalini Malani’s video screening suspended

M+ Facade, which showcases video artwork and exhibition promotions daily, has remained dark for two weeks

West Kowloon Cultural District Authority says about 10 per cent of the LED tubes cannot light up after a voltage dip earlier this month

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M+ art museum’s LED facade. Photo: Martin Chan

Published: 6:37pm, 28 Sep 2022Updated: 10:07pm, 28 Sep 2022

A giant LED screen on the exterior of Hong Kong’s M+ museum has broken down after less than a year of operation, leaving the institution unable to show a commissioned work of video that a well-known Indian artist designed specifically for the massive display, the Post has learned.

Known as the M+ Facade, the 65-by-110-metre (213-by-360 ft) screen at the West Kowloon Cultural District has featured video artwork and exhibition promotions on a daily basis since October last year, a month before the city’s biggest art museum opened.

But the display has remained dark for the past two weeks, with the screening of In Search of Vanished Blood, the fourth video commissioned for the facade, interrupted halfway through its scheduled three-month display.

The 65-by-110-metre LED screen on the exterior of M+ museum. Photo: Nora Tam

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority said about 10 per cent of the LED tubes could not light up after a voltage dip in early September. Contractors were replacing the malfunctioning ones, and the museum hoped to resume partial functioning of the facade within weeks, it said.

Nalini Malani, the artist behind the work, told the Post this week she believed the museum would “make every endeavour” to get the screen repaired and showcase her work again.

Malani’s eight-and-a-half-minute video was scheduled to run from August 5 to October 30 as an extension of her solo exhibition, “Vision in Motion” at the museum.

The creation was Malani’s artistic investigation into the effects of war and repression of women. She had expressed great excitement over the M+ Facade’s uniqueness as a platform for contemporary art in her previous interview with the Post in August.

The art hub spokesman said the museum would explore whether Malani’s work could be displayed again after the maintenance work was completed.