Hong Kong, March 12 – April 29, 2016, http://oneaspace.org.hk/, curator: Lawman
An exhibition about Hong Kong and the feelings of desperation shared among many of less wealthy majority. The identity crisis is not surprising: Being simply “transferred” as colonial subjects from one master to another, while fed with manipulative promises and simultaneously experiencing a claustrophobic futility of the everyday, stripped of one’s own voice. This does not make you a very happy person.
From another perspective, one of two exhibition rooms full of “red virus” photographs – the artist taking a photo in front of Hong Kong schools with a large black and red banner signifying the ideological influence of the communist P.R.C. ideology on H.K. education – felt like being at the height of the cold war U.S. propaganda campaign. At a time when U.S., P.R.C. and Europe all seem to have found their commonality in global capitalism, also so much cherished by the ruling class of Hong Kong, and even the U.S. president is smoking Cuban cigars, seeing artworks highlighting the danger of a “red virus” can feel like time travel.
Most of the artworks expressed actions that have been futile, yet nevertheless deemed worthy of being carried out by the artists. Looking at the title, which is referring to a phase that is attributed by the curator both to Li Ka Shing, the richest man in Hong Kong and to Gu Min Hai, one of the HK booksellers recently abducted by PRC agents – maybe the message of the artists is that they are indeed content in expressing the futility of their lives, not asking for much more.
