Art and the City: A conversation between contemporary artists from Hong Kong

Discussion 2:00 – 3:00pm
 

Breathing Space: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong is an exhibition at Asia Society Hong Kong Center that gazes upon and dissects the pressures of living in the fast paced city of Hong Kong, and provides the opportunity to pause, reflect, respond, and possibly challenge the world around us. In the interior gallery and outdoor heritage site, it presents 11 local artists whose work engage with urban experience, current affairs, or shared and personal history. The featured artists in this exclusive Art Central discussion are Adrian Wong, who contemplates how the design and renewal of the Hong Kong’s cityscape creates urban restriction and alienation; Andio Lai, who finds inspiration from interpersonal communication, and the relationship between the signifier and the signified; and Magdalen Wong, who deals with protecting the memories of a person, object or place. The conversation between these artists will abridge the themes of each of their works. The conversation will be moderated by Dominique Chan, curator of the exhibition and Head of Gallery and Exhibition at Asia Society Hong Kong Center. 

Adrian Wong received his master’s degree in research psychology from Stanford University in 2003, followed by an MFA in 2005 from Yale University. Relying heavily on a research based method, his installations, videos, and sculptures draw from varied subjects and explore the intricacies of his relationship to his environment. Based in Hong Kong since 2005, Wong is the co-founder and director of Embassy Projects, an arts consultancy and independent production studio. His recent exhibitions include the traveling exhibition Troglodyte See the Light, A Passion for Creation for the Louis Vuitton Fondation pour la Création, and Hong Kong Eye at the Saatchi Gallery. His work is included in the Uli Sigg Collection (Lucerne), the DSL Collection (Paris), Hong Kong Museum of Art (Hong Kong), M+ Museum Collection (Hong Kong) and a few notable private collections among others.
 

Magdalen Wong, born in Hong Kong, received her BFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003, and her MFA with a Trustee Merit Scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. Wong had received the Freeman Foundation Asian Artists’ Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center Residency in 2010, and the Asia Pacific Artist Fellowship from the National Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea, with a residency at the Goyang Art Studio in Seoul in 2011. This spring she participated in a two-month residency at the Fjuk Art Center, Iceland. She had exhibited at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, The Netherlands; Para/site Art Space, Hong Kong; Spring, Hong Kong; Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; Gallery 400, Chicago; Outlet Gallery, Brooklyn; Laurence Miller Gallery, NY; and Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn.
 

Andio Lai Chung Man graduated from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2015, now studying MA in Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lai is interested in making sound apparatus and media machines, sonic art performances. With the subject matters and medium of musical instrument, apparatus, playing sound and interaction, his major works explore the possible alternatives in media technology and its relative history.  


 

Dominique Chan is Head of Gallery & Exhibition at Asia Society Hong Kong Center, responsible for exhibition programming and on-site art installations. Chan oversaw the opening of the Chantal Miller Gallery in 2012 and since, he has organized a diverse range of traditional and contemporary Asian art, design and photography exhibitions. Chan worked directly with some of today’s most important international artists, such as Xu Bing, Yoshitomo Nara, and Shahzia Sikander in presenting their first solo exhibitions in Hong Kong. He is the in-house curator for the Center’s exhibitions, including Life is Only One: Yoshitomo Nara (2015), Shen Wei: Dance Strokes (2016), Roaring Guardians: the Mari-Cha Lion with Asian Traditional and Contemporary Art (2017) and Breathing Space: Contemporary Art from Hong Kong (2017). Chan is the recipient of the 2013/14 Hong Kong International Scholarships supported by the HKSAR government through the Hong Kong Arts Development Council to join the Clore Leadership Programme in the United Kingdom and seconded to Tate Modern in London.  
 

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