Thursday, June 26, 2014

13 Dimensions of Hong Kong

The latest exhibit at the Hong Kong Museum of Art gathered thirteen artists whose works emanated the essence of Hong Kong.  The Museum's website says that these thirteen "not only reflect the inseparable relationship between Hong Kong artists and local culture, but also highlight the uniqueness of Hong Kong art in this globalized world."  

The exhibit was beautiful to walk through.  The first moment I entered the gallery, I was confronted with four chickens eyeing my every movement.  This was actually the chicken robot display, where these chickens were role-models of the perfect/well-behaved chickens that do not spread diseases.  They stood in front of the video the artist made, where he took a chicken robot and asked the general public to interact with it. 


Every morning, I see old women standing outside of the pharmacies or grocery stores asking for the cardboard boxes.  They cart their wagons around and make their rounds before dropping off their flattened boxes at the recycling center.  This is what I thought of when I saw the installations below, which were made of cardboard/scrap paper.  The artist plaque said that it was to commemorate the older people who collect scrap paper for a living. 


The photographs below were taken of Hong Kong rooftops.  These were just so beautiful to view and made me wonder what the rooftops of all the skyscrapers looked like.


Below is a patchwork umbrella made of umbrellas.  When I saw this, I laughed out loud because I have bought nearly an umbrella a year.  Most years, my umbrellas gave out during the monsoon season.  The winds just blew them inside out and sometimes they just snapped off.  I've bought a rain poncho for myself this year and an umbrella that claims to be wind resistant...whatever that means!  But, this installation, similar to a lot of the others in this gallery held a quirkiness that made me smile.



The installations below actually made me laugh for the third or fourth time (I laughed a lot at the humor in some of the exhibits installations!), as I made my rounds of the gallery.  All around the city, I always see vandalized political posters.  Usually, I see posters with eyes poked out or teeth blackened.  The thing that made me laugh was realizing that it could be a form of art!


There was also a little corner, where you could listen to some local people talking about normal things.  There are subtitles, but I just liked sitting and watching them talk.  I'm a people watching type of person.


This blog post was just a little glimpse of what this exhibit shared.  The exhibit is running until the 13th of July, 2014.