<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;UTF-8">
<title>MCLC: Politics infuses art in HK</title>
</head>
<body leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0" offset="0" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;height: 100% !important;width: 100% !important;">
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !important;">
<table style="width: 100%;" bgcolor="#E7E7E7">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;" bgcolor="#E7E7E7">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc"><img style="max-width:200px;" src=""></a></td>
<td align="right">
<h6><a style="text-decoration:none !important; margin: 0!important; padding:0;font-weight: 900; font-size: 14px; text-transform: uppercase; color: #002BFF !important;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc">MCLC LIST</a></h6>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div >
<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2017/03/31/politics-infuses-art-in-hk/" target="_blank">Politics infuses art in HK</a></h3>
<div style="margin:1em 0;font-size: 13px;color:#000 !important;line-height: 23px;">
<p>Source: NYT (3/30/17)<br />
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/world/asia/hong-kong-art-political-china.html">As Hong Kong Ponders Its Future Under Beijing, Politics Infuses Its Art</a><br />
By MIKE IVES</p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">HONG KONG — As 1,194 electors were casting ballots on Sunday for <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/hongkong/index.html?inline=nyt-geo"><span class="s5">Hong Kong</span></a>’s next leader, <a href="http://sampsonwong.hk/"><span class="s5">Sampson Wong</span></a> was tagging Facebook videos that showed city residents making breakfast, riding trains and playing with cats.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">The scenes were unremarkable, and that was the point: Mr. Wong and other members of the <a href="http://addoilteam.hk/1194only/"><span class="s5">Add Oil Team</span></a>, an artists’ collective, were broadcasting the videos of people engaged in activities that did not include voting as a critique of an unrepresentative political process. “<a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/405878939789813/?acontext=%257B%2522ref%2522%253A%252298%2522%252C%2522action_history%2522%253A%2522null%2522%257D"><span class="s5">No Election in Hong Kong Now</span></a>,” the title of their Facebook Live stream said.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">The Add Oil Team plans to turn the videos into a documentary-style work that could be exhibited in a gallery. “Although it’s an angry protest gesture, it’s also kind of peaceful,” Mr. Wong said, flanked by laptops and coffee cups in a minimalist design studio.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">Nearly three years ago, this semiautonomous Chinese city of 7.3 million was roiled by months of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/world/asia/three-months-of-protests-end-quietly-in-hong-kong.html"><span class="s5">pro-democracy protests</span></a>, known as Occupy Central or the Umbrella Movement, that stoked an existential debate over its political future. The protests ended without achieving their goal of greater public participation in the election of Hong Kong’s leader, and several organizers now face <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/asia/hong-kong-umbrella-democracy-charges.html"><span class="s5">criminal charges</span></a>. In July, Hong Kong will inaugurate its new leader, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/world/asia/hong-kong-election-carrie-lam-chief-executive.html"><span class="s5">Carrie Lam</span></a>, Beijing’s preferred candidate, as the former British colony commemorates the 20th anniversary of its handover to Chinese rule.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">All of that leaves local artists struggling to find meaning in the city’s upheavals, art professionals said in interviews. And while some of their recent works are more overtly political than others, many are infused with a sense of helplessness toward what is widely seen here as the city’s increasing subjugation to Beijing’s authoritarianism.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">“The expression of frustration, or the acceptance of failure, could be the key words of the artwork which reacts to the Umbrella Movement,” said <a href="http://www.chowchunfai.com/"><span class="s5">Chow Chun Fai</span></a>, who paints <a href="http://www.chowchunfai.com/artwork_paintingmovie.html"><span class="s5">scenes from films</span></a> in which characters comment on Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">“Three years ago, we had to be very quick and loud” during the street protests, he added. But recent artwork is “more sentimental, and we have the distance to tell the story and to listen to the story.”</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">Artists and curators in Hong Kong say that some of the themes coursing through local art have been present for decades. But the 2014 protests, they say, were an important catalyst for many artists, particularly those who came of age in this century.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">“Somehow the Umbrella Movement unfolded a lot of layers of the political and social problems” that Hong Kong faces, said Clara Cheung, a co-founder of <a href="http://www.candg-artpartment.com/"><span class="s5">C&G Artpartment</span></a>, an art space in the Kowloon district.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">Recent artworks that address Hong Kong politics vary widely in message and delivery. Some are intended for public spaces, rather than commercial galleries, and feature loaded commentaries on the “one country, two systems” framework that guarantees the city its civil liberties and a high degree of autonomy until 2047.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">A prominent example is the nine-minute light show Mr. Wong and Jason Lam mounted last year that counted down the seconds until “one country, two systems” was due to expire. The display was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/world/asia/hong-kong-2047-countdown-icc.html"><span class="s5">exhibited</span></a> across the face of Hong Kong’s tallest skyscraper to coincide with a visit by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/world/asia/hong-kong-zhang-dejiang-visit.html"><span class="s5">Zhang Dejiang</span></a>, a member of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo"><span class="s5">China</span></a>’s governing Pwalolitburo Standing Committee — but <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/world/asia/hong-kong-2047-countdown-icc.html"><span class="s5">pulled</span></a> after the artists explained its subversive message.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">In a similar vein, “<a href="http://www.kaceywong.com/news/2017/2/9/controlling-device-"><span class="s5">Controlling Device</span></a>,” by <a href="http://www.kaceywong.com/new-cover-page/"><span class="s5">Kacey Wong</span></a>, shows a pair of nooses, one bronzed, and one coated in red wax. Mr. Wong has said the piece is a commentary on recent crackdowns on free expression in Hong Kong, including the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/world/asia/hong-kong-lee-bo-bookseller-china.html"><span class="s5">apparent abductions of several prominent booksellers</span></a> to the mainland in 2015.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">“We’re fighting a war that we cannot win, so how to fight it?” Mr. Wong asked on a recent afternoon in his studio. “You fight it with grace.”</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">Other artworks comment on Hong Kong’s relationship with Beijing in more roundabout ways.</span></p>
<p class="p25"><span class="s10"><a href="http://www.thingsthatcanhappen.hk/artist-in-residence-ocean-leung65372393762258034269348992347865306267532448126481.html">Ocean Leung</a></span><span class="s1">, for example, incorporates police and pro-Beijing political banners into mixed-media works that intentionally distort the banners’ original messages. The works are <a href="http://www.thingsthatcanhappen.hk/a-response-to-an-intervention-by-ocean-leung653722223825033653062675324481264813034031354382912017120837.html"><span class="s5">not overtly pro-democratic</span></a>, and Mr. Leung said that his art illustrated how difficult it was to take clear positions on political questions.</span></p>
<p class="p25"><span class="s1">“It’s an embrace of failure,” he said.</span></p>
<p class="p25"><span class="s1">Similarly oblique commentaries run through “<a href="http://asiasociety.org/hong-kong/exhibitions/breathing-space-contemporary-art-hong-kong"><span class="s5">Breathing Space: Contemporary Art From Hong Kong</span></a>,” an 11-artist show on view through July 9 at the <a href="http://asiasociety.org/hong-kong"><span class="s5">Hong Kong Center of the Asia Society</span></a>, which in November <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/asia/hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-film.html"><span class="s5">canceled a planned screening</span></a> of a documentary about the Umbrella Movement, citing political concerns.</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1"><a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/files/2017/03/31hkart-2-blog427-2ep0wyq.jpg"><img style="max-width:100%" class="size-medium wp-image-19393 alignleft" src="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/files/2017/03/31hkart-2-blog427-2ep0wyq-200x300.jpg" alt="" /></a>An untitled, mixed-media work by Ocean Leung features a disfigured banner of a pro-Beijing political party. </span><span class="s1">Credit: </span><span class="s1">Things that can happen gallery</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">One piece, “<a href="http://www.sixsixho.com/defense-and-resistance/"><span class="s5">Defense and Resistance</span></a>,” by <a href="http://www.sixsixho.com/"><span class="s5">South Ho</span></a>, shows photos of the artist walling and then unwalling himself in with bricks marked with “Made in Xianggang,” the word for Hong Kong in Mandarin, the mainland’s dominant tongue. The bricks are also stacked up in the center of the gallery, with a chunk missing, and it is unclear whether the wall is structurally sound — a possible metaphor for Beijing’s power over the city.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">An especially haunting work, “<a href="http://chloecheuk.com/IfTheMomentCame"><span class="s5">If the Moment Came</span></a>,” is a waist-high black box with a top made of wired glass and a murky interior that shows a looping video of a hand playing with a kendama, a Japanese toy featuring a wooden handle and a small ball.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">The artist, <a href="http://chloecheuk.com/"><span class="s5">Chloë Cheuk</span></a>, said that she created the installation after making an audio recording of boys playing with kendamas at one of the 2014 protest sites. She added the wired glass, she said, as a reference to protesters who smashed a window at the Legislative Council complex around the same time.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">Ms. Cheuk, 27, said that the ball’s inevitable failure to break through the glass was intended to evoke the feeling of helplessness that she said was now familiar to many young Hong Kongers.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">But that feeling transcends politics, she said, and her artistic practice is primarily guided by her emotions.</span></p>
<p class="p9"><span class="s1">“When people see my work, they can respond because they can really feel it,” she said on a recent evening in Yau Tong, an industrial area in eastern Kowloon. “They feel that they’ve been understood.”</span></p>
</div>
</div>
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<div style="margin:0em 0 2.2em 0;font-size: 13px;color:#9E9E9E !important;float:none;">
by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on March 31, 2017 </div>
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;" bgcolor="#EFEFEF">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font-size:11px;color:#666 !important;">
<p style="margin-bottom:30px">
You are subscribed to email updates from <a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc">MCLC Resource Center</a> </p>
<p>
To stop receiving these emails, <a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc?sbe_unsubscribe=632c0ffb4fada8d2">click here</a>. </p>
<p></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>