Does HK Still have Artistic Freedom?

M+ in West Kowloon is completed, and will open end of 2021

 

Hong Kong's premier contemporary art museum, M+ is finally completed. Last week the media were taken around to have a look and one big question was now that the national security law has been implemented, will that affect what is shown at M+?

The museum's director, Suhanya Raffel, said there would be "no problem" in showing dissident artist Ai Weiwei's works and other pieces included in the M+ permanent collection, because their inclusion was based on research developed from "historical facts".

M+ director Raffel says collection "no problem"

"We have always had a robust curator-led approach to everything we do and that is underpinned by research and academic rigour," she said. "Like any global museum, it is our role to present art in a relevant and appropriate manner and stimulate debate, knowledge and pleasure. A city can only be a welcoming arts hub if it offers an open environment for artists and for different views."

Raffel may have to re-think her words after Eunice Yung Hoi-yan from the New People's Party raised concerns on Wednesday that Ai's work may violate the national security law by "spreading hatred against China".

She cited the example of a black and white picture of Ai holding up his middle finger in Tiananmen Square.

"If you point your middle finger towards Tiananmen Square, it means you want to show your anger against it, or you want to subvert the government with your artwork," she told RTHK.

Yung wonders if Ai's works are subversive

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the government will protect freedom of expression, but added she was confident the museum's curators would be capable of distinguishing works that constituted artistic expression from those endangering national security.

Of the 33 galleries in M+, 12 will be dedicated to the 1,000-piece collection of contemporary Chinese art from Swiss businessman Uli Sigg. Some of the pieces were shown in an exhibition in 2016 and some of those works would definitely not be shown in mainland China.

These include the above mentioned Ai piece called A Study Perspective: Tian'anmen, and photojournalist Liu Heung-shing's picture of the June 4 crackdown where a tricycle cart driver peddling two men with gunshot wounds to hospital.

Today Ai hit back at Yung's suggestion that his work was subversive.

Is this photograph subversive or is it art?

"All artworks, if they are of value, raise questions and challenges. Challenging authority is one of the core values of art," he told RTHK.

"If she thinks artworks are just ornaments, then I'd say she doesn't understand art," Ai said.

He added if his works cannot be exhibited in the museum, this would be a signal that Hong Kong is moving further away from universal values and is becoming part of authoritarianism.

This puts M+ curators in a tough spot -- will they stand their ground in the name of artistic freedom?

 

Impressions of Art Basel

Japanese installation artist Chiharu Shiota's Where Are We Going?

March is such a busy month with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central. Oh and did you know the artist Kaws' Companion is out floating in Victoria Harbour? Wish I could be like him and just relax but there's too much to see!

Photographer Liu Heung Shing

Today was the start of Art Basel and I took a taxi to get there. The drive decided to take the Central-Wan Chai bypass and before we got out of the exit for Wan Chai North, there was a traffic jam with cars going to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The first day is usually reserved for the media and VVIP, but by the time I got there around 3.30pm (it had started around 2pm), the bottom floor of the massive art show was already crawling with people.

And there were lots of beautiful people or people trying to dress arty farty. And lots of Mandarin was being spoken by lots of young women wearing Chanel boucle jackets and dresses, and men in Louis Vuitton shirts and even a crazy white vest with lots of pockets embossed with the LV logo. Do people actually wear this stuff?

Detail of pink swirls of Park Seo-Bo's Ecriture No. 160208

We didn't spot many celebrities, or wasn't paying enough attention, but saw Uli Sigg, the art buyer and philanthropist who is a big supporter of Ai Weiwei. We also saw Hong Kong-born photographer Liu Heung Shing who has come out with a new book comparing and contrasting the Soviet Union and Communist China.

The man himself embodies history, having seen China become a Communist country and watched it transform into a capitalist country with Chinese characteristics. I heard him speak about 10 years ago in Beijing and he has so many anecdotes he can still produce even more books.

But on with the art. My colleague noticed there were fewer large art pieces on show this year, perhaps galleries were worried about having big price tags that would scare off potential buyers and only brought out smaller ones instead.

What is she doing? Dan Colen's Rabbit and the Moon

For example some Francis Bacon prints were going for US$40,000. Wonder if they were snapped up right away.

As usual there was a lot of strange art that wasn't executed very well, and some that were visually arresting, which is what you need at an art fair where it can get mind numbing going by every stall. I did see a few pieces that I had seen at previous Art Basel shows. Perhaps they were hoping to catch buyers who were first timers at the art fair?

One of the large installation pieces was beautiful and airy. It's called Where Are We Going? by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. It's actually composed of lots of strings to make up a series of boats that seem to be floating in the air, making it very dreamy and light.

Rivane Neuenschwander's detail of garlic peel on fabric

A pretty piece in shades of pink is called Ecriture No. 160208 by Korean artist Park Seo-Bo. It's a series of acrylic swirls of paint that seem to be applied with a piping bag and different shaped nozzles. It's so pretty and pastel-y, like a giant vertical cake with tons of pink icing on top.

There were also some sculptures that made us do a double-take. One had a naked woman playing with a rabbit on her chest. New York-based artist Dan Colen created Rabbit and the Moon and it's a weird piece. Who would put that in their living room?

Another has a woman wearing a T-shirt and shorts, reading the paper with miscellaneous goods around her. And then we read the caption and it says: Flea Market Lady by Duane Hanson. A security guard had to be posted next to this statue in case people would touch her!

Chinese artist Zhang Yu performing Tea Feeding

Meanwhile Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Le presented some quietly strong pieces featuring embroidery on cloth. And the embroidery is white thread on white cloth. One is called Texture of Memory #7 2000-1 and it's a portrait of three people together in a line drawing by embroidery. The lines look simple, but up close involve a lot of work and skill to execute well. Utterly beautiful to me.

This other work was white too. It's three-dimensional and at first it looked like bulbs from flowers, but up close they are actually garlic skins. How did the artist, Rivane Neuenschwander extract these thin skins off of the garlic in one piece? She had to do several hundred for this untitled piece.

Vic Muniz's Letter Rack Hong Kong (Yellow)

I find Brazilian artist Vic Muniz's work fun to look at and so I purposely made sure I swung by Ben Brown to take a look. This time it's more like a random collection of items one might find in someone's memory box or time capsule of Hong Kong. There's postcards and ticket stubs, name cards, coins, maps and stamps. I miss his visually-arresting collages. Or maybe he didn't have much time because Ruinart champagne had recruited him to do a special collection creating collages using the actual bark and leaves from the vineyards. Yawn.

The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija had some pieces shown this year that are new, but using 2014 copies of the South China Morning Post as his canvas. One was untitled and strangely featured two giant circles on newsprint. Usually he has a message written on them. Another exhibited by another gallery had Chinese characters written in red on top of the paper, saying something like, "We are together under one sky making dreams". I prefer his previous piece that said: "Freedom cannot be simulated".

Oh and one final performance art piece. We saw Chinese artist Zhang Yu pouring red tea in giant bowls that were sitting on top of paper. He kept pouring the tea until it slightly overflowed. Then we could see why -- on the walls were uniform circular blotches from previous pourings. We don't know the significance of it, but they kind of looked like fuzzy ancient Chinese coins. The performance art is called Tea Feeding...

SCMP newspaper used by Rirkrit Tivavanija

After about two and a half hours of going through pretty much the entire fair, it was time to call it a day. I like seeing what's out there, the artistic zeitgeist. It was more whimsical pieces than serious political statements. Another Art Basel done and dusted!