Tai Kwun Contemporary is delighted to announce a new live art exhibition by the trailblazing artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus; lives in New York and Athens). Her first solo exhibition in Asia, Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror will be presenting live installations that explore the sculptural body, image-making, and the deceleration of time. Comprising elements of performance, sound, photography and painting, the exhibition includes works newly commissioned for Tai Kwun’s architectural environment; the exhibition will run from 13 October to 26 November 2023.

Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror gravitates around the production and transmission of image through the usage of mirrors dressed in gold. Playing with the myriad meanings and representations of gold in ancient and contemporary myths—as a colour in divination, as a symbolic representation of capitalism, or even a kitsch sample from pop culture—the permanence of gold historically connected the substance to eternity and the divine, yet this desire to possess gold has also turned into a symbol of capital and accelerated consumerism. The paradox between the immutability of gold and the shifting perceptions of its representation echoes the tensions in Hassabi’s practice—between subjects and objects, dance and sculpture, the live body and still images, the spectacular and the everyday.

The exhibition is constructed by durational performances which run daily from 11am to 7pm Tuesdays to Sundays, performed by dancers from Hong Kong and around the world. The artist will also be present in the exhibition for the first half of the exhibition period. A conversation with the artist will take place in October, while Tai Kwun Contemporary will also be hosting a series of public programmes during the course of the exhibition, so please stay tuned for further details.

Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror 

Artist:              Maria Hassabi

Performers:   Marah Arcilla, Elena Antoniou, Sylvie Cox, Li De, Maria Hassabi, Adam Russell Jones, Mickey Mahar, Tasos Nikas, Yuma Sylla, Sara Tan, Solong Zhang

Curators:        Xue Tan, with Louiza Ho

Date:               13 October to 26 November 2023

Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am to 7 pm

Monday, CLOSED

About Maria Hassabi

Since the early 2000s Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) has carved a unique artistic practice based on the relationship between the live body, the still image, and the sculptural object. Her works reflect on concepts of time and the human figure, while employing a variety of media to emphasise the complexity of formal organisation. In most of Hassabi's works the performing body is the main subject, often embedded within imposing installations. Through meticulously crafting her material—every action, even the gaze, is subject to counts and cues—a constant negotiation between the body's relation to gravity, time and space reveals the physical side effects of labour, anchoring both dancers' and viewers' awareness to the present moment. Her works are always in dialogue with a site's unique architecture, while conventions and hierarchies common to museums, theatres, and public spaces are taken into consideration.

Maria Hassabi has had numerous solo exhibitions and presentations in art institutions and performance spaces around the world, including LUMA Arles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her works have also been featured in group exhibitions and festivals such as at FRONT Triennial, Cleveland; Performa, New York; documenta14, Kassel; and the 55^th Venice Biennale.

About Tai Kwun Contemporary Live Art

Maria Hassabi: I’ll Be Your Mirror is the latest exhibition in Tai Kwun Contemporary’s unique live art programming. This series of exhibitions is centred around durational performances, interdisciplinary practices, and time-based art. Previous exhibitions have included artists such as Pan Daijing, Tino Sehgal, Scarlet Yu & Xavier Le Roy, Nile Koetting, Mette Edvardsen and Eisa Jocson.

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Editor’s notes:

Please click here to download the hi-res images with captions.

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm (closed on Mondays).

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

About Tai Kwun — Centre for Heritage and Arts

Tai Kwun is Hong Kong’s Centre for Heritage and Arts — a cultural destination for inspiration, stimulation and enjoyment. We aspire to offer the best heritage and arts experiences, and to cultivate knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history in the community.

Tai Kwun invites all visitors on a journey of discovery that unites across multiple genres of arts, heritage, culture and lifestyle in Hong Kong. Here, visitors will discover the rich heritage of the site through the thematic exhibitions and immersive public programmes that explore Hong Kong’s history and culture, alongside a multitude of vibrant and inclusive contemporary art presentations and performing arts offerings all year round.

Opened in May 2018 and operating on a not-for-profit model, Tai Kwun is the fruition of a joint partnership between The Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Government of the HKSAR to conserve and revitalise the buildings of the historic Central Police Station compound, which represents one of the most significant revitalisation projects in Hong Kong. The site comprises three Declared Monuments of Hong Kong – the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison – all have been meticulously conserved, with unfailing attention to authenticity. The site also includes two new buildings – JC Contemporary and JC Cube, by renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron – and several outdoor spaces – Parade Ground, Prison Yard and Laundry Steps – providing an exciting venue for the public programmes presented by Tai Kwun and its partners.

Tai Kwun, which means “big station” in Chinese, is the colloquial name used by Hong Kong people to refer to the former police headquarters and the surrounding compound. The name has been adopted as a reminder of the historical importance of this living heritage site.

In 2019, Tai Kwun received the Award of Excellence in the 2019 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. This is the highest honour of the prestigious Awards, which bestows an international recognition of the outstanding achievement in the conservation and revitalisation efforts of Tai Kwun.

Tai Kwun Contemporary is the not-for-profit visual art programme of Tai Kwun. Realising six to eight exhibitions a year and curatorially driven, Tai Kwun Contemporary showcases and commissions artists from Hong Kong and beyond, while offering an extensive range of public programming. With the aspiration to contribute to and transform the experience and understanding of contemporary art in Hong Kong, Tai Kwun Contemporary is devoted to inspiring the Hong Kong public with an inquisitive attitude and committed to offering a conducive platform for learning and experimentation.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.TaiKwun.hk.

Tai Kwun, in association with Tetra Neon Exchange, is proud to present Vital Signs, a new exhibition that celebrates Hong Kong’s unique and distinctive visual identity through its iconic neon heritage. The exhibition invites contemporary artisans to follow in the footsteps of the pioneering neon masters who came before them, and pays tribute to the skill, craftsmanship, audacity, competitiveness, precision, and can-do mindset that define this vibrant art form.

Visitors to Vital Signs will be able to experience and appreciate up close the neon signs, master craftsmen, and vibrant streetscapes that were once synonymous with Hong Kong’s visual culture. The exhibition spans two entirely separate spaces within Tai Kwun, commencing in the Duplex Studio in Block 01 where visitors can marvel at the sheer size and audacity of over 20 neon signs, many of which have been conserved and recommissioned by Tetra Neon Exchange and are on public display for the first time.

The neon tour then continues at Laundry Steps, which are transformed into a riotous electrified streetscape crowned by another cluster of 5 authentic and original Hong Kong neon signs. The exhibition  highlights the flair and  imagination, as well as the  ingenious problem-solving of Hong Kong's legendary neon masters, and invites visitors to step back into the Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay of the 80s and 90s, where distinctive canopies of dazzling, blinking, multi-coloured neon signs in Chinese characters (and occasionally English) competed for attention in the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island – an image instantly recognizable around the world, capturing in a single polaroid shot the vitality, excitement, and opportunity that drew the world to Hong Kong.

“Far from being the exclusive domain of huge international brands, neon was the medium embraced by thousands of local companies and family businesses in Hong Kong who could grab the public’s attention through quirky and creative design,” said Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts. “Vital Signs, while being a joyous celebration of this vivid and unmistakable look, also pauses to reflect on how much of this radiant past has been lost. We hope that Vital Signs, as the name implies, reveals a living visual medium rather than a sunset industry, and that our nostalgia for neon finds new friends, fans and exponents to preserve this wondrous legacy and lead it in new directions.”

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to tour visitors through the Vital Signs exhibition and look forward to sharing with the public our passion and affection for the signs which evoke Hong Kong at its best – bold, confident and brimming with possibility,” said Cardin Chan, General Manager of Tetra Neon Exchange. “As a non-profit organisation dedicated to rescuing and conserving pieces that preserve Hong Kong’s authentic neon identity, we are very excited to bring these huge and elaborate artefacts back into full public view.”

Vital Signs runs from 30 June to 3 September 2023 and is open from 12pm to 8pm every day. The exhibition has been made possible with core funding provided by The Hong Kong Jockey Club through its Charities Trust, and with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

To further promote the art of neon and support Hong Kong's neon industry, our open call, Neon Connection, is inviting local artists, designers and architects to conceive their own large-scale public sculptures using the medium of neon, to create a visual thread which links Tai Kwun's buzzing Parade Ground with the more introspective Prison Yard, via Tai Kwun Lane. The winning design will be fully realised by Tai Kwun and installed next January.

Along with the exhibition, Tai Kwun will host a series of public programmes beginning on 11 July 2023, including a series of workshops, talks, screenings, and tours, designed to immerse Vital Signs visitors in the unique cultural heritage of Hong Kong’s neon industry. These programmes aim to explore the remarkable craftsmanship behind neon artworks and their significance in shaping Hong Kong's future.

Tai Kwun Contemporary is excited to announce HOPE — a large-scale summer exhibition of the sculptures, paintings and moving image works by the renowned Australian artist Patricia Piccinini from 24 May to 3 September.

Best known for her hyper-realistic sculptures whose human scale and touchingly expressive features belie their non-human limbs, fins, wings and scales — cute, intriguing, grotesque — Piccinini’s vision explores the unexpected consequences of tampering with nature. Featuring more than 50 fascinatingly detailed and highly imaginative works across different media, including paintings and moving images in addition to her distinctive sculptural works, HOPE offers visitors an engrossing, perplexing and deeply touching view of a fantastical imaginary world, yet one with which we identify naturally and instinctively.

Piccinini has been featured in many highly successful exhibitions around the world, including a pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2003. While her work raises questions about scientific progress and mankind’s destructive power over nature, a resilient optimism shines through as the scale and expressiveness of her works speak of tenderness, care and empathy.

HOPE is Patricia Piccinini’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and encompasses all of the gallery spaces of JC Contemporary. Among the largest works in the show is Celestial Fields — a vast immersive installation comprising 4,500 individual flower stems sprouting both upwards from the floor and downwards from the ceiling, drawing the visitor into its embrace where it poses questions on the nature of progress. Elsewhere, Piccinini responds to the signature spiral staircase of JC Contemporary with a 20-metre-high installation of multi-coloured wigs spun together and suspended down the void from the ceiling of the top floor.

Ultimately, much of Patricia Piccinini’s work explores the notion of interdependence: the interdependence between humans and artificial objects — such as shoes, cradles, chairs — or the interdependence between humans and other creatures. The artist is fascinated by what she calls “artificial nature”: she imagines awe-inspiring and somewhat unsettling mixtures of creatures, where humans may be combined with living beings concocted in the imagination — or in the laboratory. These “chimeras” fundamentally ask questions about how technological advances are opening new horizons, given that humanity appears to be on the cusp of being able to design and create new forms of life and new forms of living-mechanical hybrids. For the artist, this prospect triggers both hope and anxiety about the nature of progress; at the same time, the artist imagines how living with such creatures will demand love, care, and empathy — the same love and care that humanity is morally compelled to show to other living creatures we share the planet with. Visitors to HOPE will therefore not only experience the artist’s spectacular vision but will also be invited to delve more deeply into broader questions about progress, science and technology, as well as the ethics of care.

“After last year’s wildly popular Behind Your Eyelid summer exhibition, we are honoured to present another spectacularly large-scale exhibition by such a legendary artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Our preconceived notions about biology are challenged by Piccinini\'s works, which force us to confront the limits of genetic experimentation, technology, the arts, and, of course, humanity itself. Moreover, this exhibition reflects a longer cycle where Tai Kwun Contemporary explores the notion of ‘future bodies’ and the question of nature. HOPE will offer an artistic response — or perhaps rather than an answer, the artist poses more questions about the state of science and technology and progress in the world today,” said Tobias Berger, Curator of HOPE — Patricia Piccinini.

Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts, commented, "An exhibition of the breadth, and vision of HOPE is a significant commitment for any contemporary art institution, and would have been unimaginable without the unwavering support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club and this exhibition’s Lead Sponsor Indosuez Wealth Management, We salute the Club and Indosuez for enabling Tai Kwun to bring the extraordinary art of Patricia Piccinini to Hong Kong for this summer exhibition. We are tremendously proud to bring Patricia and her studio of skilled technicians and artisans to Hong Kong and very grateful to Tobias for once again curating a stunning exhibition which we know will win fans for the artist, for contemporary art in general and for Tai Kwun. Less visible to our visitors is the outstanding behind-the-scenes work of Tai Kwun’s small but dynamic Contemporary Art team, led by Head of Art Dr Pi Li, who have once again gone above and beyond the call of duty to guarantee a wonderful experience for all visitors from the moment the gallery doors open.”

“At Indosuez, we are committed to supporting the vibrant arts and cultural landscape in Hong Kong. We believe that the arts have the unique ability to connect and inspire the communities we live and operate in, and are thrilled to be the Lead Sponsor of HOPE by Patricia Piccinini at Tai Kwun,” said Olivier Livenais, CEO, Hong Kong, at Indosuez Wealth Management.

Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will also be hosting a wide range of public programming and educational events that dive into the deeper themes raised by Piccinini’s works, including her references to classical Greek mythology and art historical iconography, as well as broader ethical questions about science, progress, and ethics.

These include Tai Kwun Conversations: HOPE — A Dialogue between Patricia Piccinini and Tobias Berger; a series of film screenings chosen by the artist in Patricia Piccinini’s Choice; Workshop: Making of HOPE — Patricia Piccinini; Teacher’s Morning and Teacher’s Workshop; curator’s tours and other guided public tours. Of particular interest to families with children will be the Family Day events held throughout the run of the exhibition. Finally, Patricia Piccinini After Hours will be offering intimate conversations with special guests and speakers, who will chat about topics such as ethics and morality in biotech and genetics, climate crisis and extinction, and human creations of life.

HOPE will also present a small number of artist editions and merchandise in the Tai Kwun Contemporary kiosk in the gallery reception area.

Tickets to the exhibition is available on Klook. HK$60 for general tickets and HK$50 for concession tickets (Full-time students with ID, people with disabilities, and senior citizens over the age of 60).

Tickets will also be available at the JC Contemporary reception: HK$70 (general) and HK$60 (concession).

Children under the age of 5 can enjoy free admission.

Meanwhile, Tai Kwun will offer limited qualities of buy-one get-one free admission tickets exclusive to TK Fan on a first come, first serve basis.

For more details about the exhibition, various activities, and ticketing information, visit: https://qrs.ly/vsetej4

Lead Sponsor: Indosuez Wealth Management

HOPE

Artist: Patricia Piccinini

Curator: Tobias Berger

Date: 24 May to 3 September 2023

Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am to 7 pm

Monday, CLOSED

On-site: HK$70 (Adults) | HK$60 (Concession)

Online: HK$60 (Adults) | HK$50 (Concession)

About Patricia Piccinini

Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa in 1965, Patricia Piccinini grew up mainly in Australia, where her family moved in 1972. At the beginning of her artistic career, she spent a substantial amount of time in medical museums, making drawings of preserved specimens. Indeed, her works usually begin with her drawings, which then are translated by the artist and her team of technicians into three-dimensional objects. Since the 1990s, Piccinini’s work has combined the cute and the grotesque, spurring viewers to overcome a sense of revulsion and to see the beauty of all forms, however unsettling, deformed, or artificial. In 2003, Piccinini represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, and since then she has had numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world.

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Editor’s notes:

Please click here to download the hi-res images with captions.

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 8pm (closed on Mondays), and Fridays to Saturdays from 11am to 9pm.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

About Tai Kwun — Centre for Heritage and Arts

Tai Kwun is Hong Kong’s Centre for Heritage and Arts — a cultural destination for inspiration, stimulation and enjoyment. We aspire to offer the best heritage and arts experiences, and to cultivate knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history in the community.

Tai Kwun invites all visitors on a journey of discovery that unites across multiple genres of arts, heritage, culture and lifestyle in Hong Kong. Here, visitors will discover the rich heritage of the site through the thematic exhibitions and immersive public programmes that explore Hong Kong’s history and culture, alongside a multitude of vibrant and inclusive contemporary art presentations and performing arts offerings all year round.

Opened in May 2018 and operating on a not-for-profit model, Tai Kwun is the fruition of a joint partnership between The Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Government of the HKSAR to conserve and revitalise the buildings of the historic Central Police Station compound, which represents one of the most significant revitalisation projects in Hong Kong. The site comprises three Declared Monuments of Hong Kong – the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison – all have been meticulously conserved, with unfailing attention to authenticity. The site also includes two new buildings – JC Contemporary and JC Cube, by renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron – and several outdoor spaces – Parade Ground, Prison Yard and Laundry Steps – providing an exciting venue for the public programmes presented by Tai Kwun and its partners.

Tai Kwun, which means “big station” in Chinese, is the colloquial name used by Hong Kong people to refer to the former police headquarters and the surrounding compound. The name has been adopted as a reminder of the historical importance of this living heritage site.

In 2019, Tai Kwun received the Award of Excellence in the 2019 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. This is the highest honour of the prestigious Awards, which bestows an international recognition of the outstanding achievement in the conservation and revitalisation efforts of Tai Kwun.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.TaiKwun.hk.

Join Tai Kwun as the compound invites you to Feel Your Heart Beat in an anniversary celebration like no other this May with heartfelt programmes such as Unfurl, Stepping Up, Hidden Spaces Tour and HOPE—Patricia Piccinini

For over half a decade, Tai Kwun has delighted and enlightened visitors and guests, immersing them in arts, culture and heritage. This month Tai Kwun celebrates its fifth anniversary, inviting you to feel your heart beat with us, as we unveil spectacular performances and exhibitions that honour the community for helping to transform the compound into the extraordinary space it is today and will continue to be in the future.

Since opening its doors to the public five years ago, the heritage site has come alive with culture, heritage and internationally renowned art exhibitions, musical and performing arts performances, films, docent tours and more. Over 12 million visitors have visited Tai Kwun over the years, enjoying the 3,900 programmes that have graced the galleries, venues and shops within the compound.

While The Hong Kong Jockey Club conserved and revitalised Tai Kwun, and through its Charities Trust provides the core funding for Tai Kwun’s arts and heritage programmes, Tai Kwun belongs to the people of Hong Kong as they are the true owners of the heritage site. In celebration of its fifth anniversary, Tai Kwun is launching a myriad of exciting art and culture programmes under the Feel Your Heart Beat initiative, bringing back treasured moments while creating new transformative experiences that touch the community to become the vibrant heart of Hong Kong. The abstract form of a beating heart represents Tai Kwun's mission in promoting cultural participation and community engagement, and visitors are invited to experience the city's finest artistic and cultural delights, all the while feeling their heart beat inside the historical compound of Tai Kwun.

Welcoming all to come along and be immersed in the familiar environment alongside one’s favourite people to truly feel at home, Tai Kwun is celebrating the milestone with heartfelt programmes such as Unfurl, Stepping Up, Hidden Spaces Tour, HOPE—Patricia Piccinini and limited-time visitor gifts along with an exclusive TK Fan giveaway.

Unfurl

The Parade Ground is set to be transformed into a unique garden full of light, colour, and sound by the Asian debut of Unfurl from 23 to 31 May, with installations that enchant both crowds and individuals. Nature, art and technology have combined to create this visual spectacle consisting of 19 plants, nine of which are massive robots. The interactive, gentle giants in Unfurl are made from fabric and air, towering as high as five metres. They form a dreamscape where plants can sense that you’ve come to visit and thus reach out to connect, enabling a joyful experience not to be missed that celebrates the wonder and intelligence of nature’s design sensibilities, and makes space for human connection and play.

Stepping Up

Welcoming home artists and performers who have performed at Tai Kwun since its opening in 2018, the centre will be filled to the brim with live performances of the special programme Stepping Up held over the long weekend of 26 – 28 May. The music performance on 26 May, curated by music producer Janet Yau who has collaborated with Tai Kwun since 2018, will showcase a diverse mixture of classical Western music and contemporary Chinese music, from standard ensemble to mixed ensemble. On 27 – 28 May, circus newcomers and veterans will return with Circus Box, who made their debut performance at Tai Kwun in 2020. The long weekend performance will be hosted by Vivek Mahbubani, a local sought-after stand-up comedian who is one of the first artists to perform at Laundry Steps at Tai Kwun’s opening. Visitors are welcome to come and enjoy these first-rate and vibrant performances in the inviting atmosphere of the Laundry Steps.

Hidden Spaces Tour

heritage spots strewn around the Central Police Station Compound, where secluded architectural traces may well be located inside the Hidden Spaces Tour, including underground passages to the courthouse, Tai Kwun’s prison cell revitalisation, and air-raid shelter.

HOPE—Patricia Piccinini

Not to be missed is the intriguing, large-scale exhibition HOPE—Patricia Piccinini held at JC Contemporary starting 24 May, supported by our corporate patron Indosuez Wealth Management as the Lead Sponsor of the exhibition. As renowned Australian artist Patricia Piccinini’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, HOPE showcases more than 60 artworks, ten of which have been specially commissioned for Tai Kwun Contemporary across two series. Featuring hyperrealistic and surreal sculptural, photographic and film works by the artist, the immersive exhibition HOPE addresses crucial concerns about the nature of history, progress, and technology, as well as our potential to come together and live in harmony.

TK FAN Exclusive

Truly a place for the people, members of TK FAN may redeem one token to use at the exclusive 5^th-anniversary capsule machine and receive a celebratory gift during the festivities period of 23 – 31 May 2023. There will be a limited daily quota on a first-come-first-served basis.

For more details about the exhibition, various activities, and ticketing information, visit: https://qrs.ly/3xesogm

Venture into the realm of sustainability in full bloom

Hong Kong, 04 April 2023 -- “Tai Kwun In Bloom” returns to the Parade Ground for its third year from today until 10 April! Bursting with botanicals just before the Easter weekend, the annual flower extravaganza offers an abundance of lush and lavish experiences for this entire week. Visitors of Tai Kwun can experience the compound in full bloom once again and delight in the unforgettable garden, which puts sustainability and eco-friendliness at the forefront of its celebration. Eighteen handpicked local brand partners are set to join the jubilee, with lovely workshops, botanical-inspired bites, and offerings, and plenty of spectacular and sustainable "Instagrammable" displays focusing on promoting a greener lifestyle for all.

Blooming and Beyond…

Tai Kwun is dedicated to finding the right balance between extravagance and sustainability in addition to bringing eco-friendly lifestyle offerings to people in Hong Kong and beyond. This year Tai Kwun wishes to share the uniqueness and beauty of flowers during Tai Kwun In Bloom 2023, and has crafted new practices that will offset carbon emissions caused by refrigeration and long-haul transportation. The flower show collaborates with nearby flower farms in an effort to substitute imported flowers with locally produced flowers, reducing the market's carbon emissions.

To further minimise environmental impacts, In Bloom is set to lower its installation wastage by up to 90%. Most of the festival’s fixtures have been made from upcycled materials, and over 95% are designed to be reusable. Now, ready to be given a second life, Tai Kwun will collaborate with local groups to transform the fixtures into home furniture for local families in need. All the suitable flowers and plants used at the set-up will also be given away to local NGOs and ready for adoption by the end of the market. Stay tuned to Tai Kwun’s Facebook and Instagram for the adoption details to enhance your home garden and give these plants a lovable second life!

A kaleidoscope bursting with blooms

This year's market features a plethora of Hong Kong-owned brands, including florists, botanical stores, lifestyle, and even food and beverage brands! The market features a range of floristry brands, including Flower Flows in You, Give Her Flower, nao florist and FLORISTRY by ART OF LIVING, from fresh flower boutiques to single-stem flowers and weekly flower orders. For those who are looking for exotic botanical and plant options, Forest Round Round, ROOT and Uncle Caudex are here for you. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves to be short on time with no wiggle room for plant babies can explore the never-withered hand-dyed fabric flowers from Timeless Flower!

Local bakery Solight Studio, Kombucha brand Fruitable Hong Kong and agro-food brand LoCoFARMS also join the celebration, supplying the market with food and drinks that not only deliver flavour, but also a delectable journey with lovely stories from locally farmed produce.

As the first season of Tai Kwun In Bloom that visitors can enjoy bites and sips at the market, there are plenty of plates to discover, such as the true Spanish flavours from 22 Ships, who have brought their traditional yet modern tapas and drinks from chef Antonio Oviedo. Meanwhile, Between is set to present delicious modern Japanese café bites, as well as signature blends and wellness beverages crafted by seasoned baristas. Botanical buddies can be sweetly reminded to embrace sustainability and bring their own cutlery for some quick and easy treats.

Tai Kwun In Bloom is a market for people to buy environmental friendly. GREEN BITCH loves the earth and is the perfect spot for one to find all the goodies needed for enhancing a sustainable urban lifestyle. Designs have been crafted to last a lifetime at Tiny Island Maps, while SOULMATTE‘s plant-based vegan leather handbags offer a beautiful alternative to animal leather. Not to mention DayDaySoap, Conceptu Home and Yiwooo.co, three top-notch local brands embracing craftmanship and sustainability with natural ingredients.

Budding in green treats

A sure way to find oneself rewarded with a bed of roses, TAI KWUN FAN who spend an accumulated HK$500 or above at Tai Kwun In Bloom partner’s booths, will also receive a HK$50 Tai Kwun e-voucher that can be used at selected shops and restaurants at Tai Kwun (terms and conditions apply).

Green-themed plates and lifestyle options from shops and restaurants

Tai Kwun is set to blossom not only inside the Parade Ground, but also within the restaurants and shops where visitors can find extravagant bouquets, baskets and green-themed plates and lifestyle offerings. Gin lovers will be delighted upon entry to the Botanical Garden, and the evening can only become more magical with a signature cocktail from Dragonfly! For those embracing sobriety, floral-inspired cold brew tea from LockCha Tea House is served not only as a soothing beverage, but as a work of art. Finally, those who have a sweet tooth for bites instead of drinks can head to The Chinese Library and discover splendid cakes and other desserts.

For those wanting to get crafty, one’s inner gardener can be released during bonart’s Mounted Rabbit’s Foot Fern Workshop, while PAP Studio’s glass mosaic workshop allows for one to enter a zone of absolute concentration as the class teaches the beauty of moving light and shadows. With workshops galore, visitors can also paint their own white porcelain bowl with different flower gods at Touch Ceramics. Last, but certainly not least, book lovers are invited to indulge in "Paper Blossoms" from TASCHEN.

Fabulous Sustainable-Themed Workshops

Tai Kwun In Bloom 2023 has joined hands with two participating local brands: “Yiwooo” and “Fruitable Hong Kong”, to present a functional and aesthetically pleasing “Tai Kwun x Yiwooo Bamboo Crafting Workshop” and “Tai Kwun x Fruitable Hong Kong Kombucha workshop”. Participants will learn basic bamboo-weaving techniques to create bamboo trays without using any glue, and how to brew kombucha with locally farmed products.

Tai Kwun Contemporary's BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair 2023 is returning for its fifth edition, with local, regional, and international exhibitors joining in person. Extending across the gallery spaces of JC Contemporary and F Hall in Tai Kwun from 28 April to 1 May 2023, this latest edition also launches "Sounds Like Print”, a project that explores the intersection of “sound” and “print”.

For the first time since 2020, BOOKED: is welcoming exhibitors from outside the city physically back in Hong Kong, including Printed Matter (New York), Nieves (Zurich), onestar press / Three Star Books (Paris), Self Publish Be Happy (London), Afterall (London), Jakarta Art Book Fair (Jakarta), aBC (Beijing/Shanghai), Jiazazhi (Ningbo/Shanghai), and more. Additionally, Display Distribute and Reading Room will respectively bring along a special selection of books from lumbung kios and lumbung publishers, previously featured in Documenta 15. This inspiring range of artists and exhibitors reasserts BOOKED: as a major regional art book fair.

Venturing into new horizons, BOOKED: 2023 includes the project "Sounds Like Print" (28 April – November 2023), co-curated by Ingrid Pui Yee Chu and Edward Sanderson, and co-organised with Daniel Szehin Ho. “Sounds Like Print” explores how the visible and the audible overlap: on the one hand, the ways in which sound and music—what we hear and listen to—are recorded in print, in the packaging around sound and music, as well as magazines, zines, and flyers, and on the other, how printed matter can trigger or generate sounds. Created in affordable, multiple copies for distribution and circulation, music/sound recordings as well as printed matter have remarkable similarities to one another, particularly in opposition to the classical notion of “art” considered as valuable and unique. There is thus an accessible, indie or self-made spirit here.

The project launches with a special display of sound art and experimental music primarily from the Mainland, on loan from the archive of Hong Kong-based curator and scholar Dr. Edward Sanderson, alongside several "Notations" exploring associated themes. Other artworks by Samson Young (Hong Kong), Dave Muller (Los Angeles) and mmmmor studio (Düsseldorf/Hong Kong) are set among the Artists' Book Library. During BOOKED: 2023, “Sounds Like Print” features a durational piano performance spearheaded by Samson Young as part of his larger Furniture Music series, which combines repurposed furniture with books and recorded sound as a way to visually represent sound as well as its silences.

Featuring more than 80 artists, publishers, organisations, and booksellers, BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair also includes special displays by the Hong Kong photographer Kurt Tong, the Swiss independent publishing house Nieves, and the high-end French publisher onestar press / Three Star Books, along with a wide range of public programming such as talks, workshops, and performances. Of note is an on-site performance by BASE (Florence Lam and Pang Jing), who will walk through the fair and interact with books in a variety of acrobatic ways, generating new definitions of female "bodily knowledge".  

BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair underscores Tai Kwun Contemporary's dedication to providing a platform for creative practitioners and publishers who are invested in books as a medium of artistic and intellectual expression while providing an opportunity for public audiences to enjoy and engage with these materials as art, and as an important resource for learning and research.

Tickets will be available on KLOOK from 3 April, HK$40 for Adults and HK$30 for Concession; limited numbers of tickets will be available on site.

Highlighted participants this year include:

Printed Matter (New York)

-           Founded in 1976, Printed Matter, Inc. is the world's leading non-profit organisation dedicated to the dissemination, understanding and appreciation of artists' books and related publications.

onestar press / Three Star Books (Paris)

-           Onestar press / Three Star Books has produced over 300 books, 300 multiples and artists' films since 2000, allowing for collaboration among international artists on a variety of projects. This has enabled them to access and use new technologies.

David Zwirner Books (New York)

-           David Zwirner Books is a publishing house dedicated to publishing the highest quality art publications. It focuses on projects that are artist led or inspired, and commissions texts by novelists, poets, and journalists. It was founded in 2014 and publishes over 25 titles a year, available worldwide in museum stores, independent bookstores, online, and in all gallery locations.

Jakarta Art Book Fair (Jakarta)

-           Further Reading Press is an independent multi-format publishing platform with a production and distribution unit, that seeks to engage in discourse within design practices by exploring the wider contexts through various programmed experiences, such as online publication, printed periodicals, pop-ups, and residency.

-           The Jakarta Art Book Fair showcases a range of Indonesian independent publishing.

Jiazazhi (Ningbo/Shanghai)

-           Hailing from Shanghai, Jiazazhi is a photo art publisher devoted to exploring the possibilities of photo work presentation.

Reading Room (Guangzhou)

-           Reading Room offers publications from an active network of art collectives and cultural commons, and is a part of the "lumbung" presentation by BOLOHO (in documenta 15). Based in Guangzhou, they share a regional perspective as a member of Lumbung Publishers.

Self Publish Be Happy (London)

-           Self Publish Be Happy is dedicated to shaping contemporary photography and visual culture through publishing, online and offline events, and education programmes.

Nieves (Zurich)

-           A one-man publishing house, founded in 2001, Nieves focuses on producing artist publications and zines.

Case Publishing & shashasha (Tokyo)

-           Case Publishing is a Tokyo-based publisher founded in 2015. For nearly a decade they have spotlighted Japan's artistic culture showcasing contemporary art, photography and design.

P_PAL (Beijing)

-           Beijing's latest up-and-coming magazine focused on artists' books and independent publishing.

abc (art books in China fair) (Beijing)

-           One of the largest art book fairs in the Mainland, abc hosts fairs in metropolitan Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and beyond.

Highlighted Local Exhibitors

mini press @ Tiana Cloudland

-          mini press is a publishing project of Tiana Cloudland, which advocates publishing independent publications in limited editions, mini-sizes and hand-binding.

This Bakery

-           A fantastic, mystical world of stories including but not limited to comics, storytelling and illustration.

YeP YeP

-           Featuring works by emerging local artists, YeP YeP is an experimental fashion and art magazine published in Hong Kong.

ACO Books

-           An independent bookshop located in Hong Kong, ACO Books believes in freedom of expression and the sharing of knowledge. It is a space for connecting art practitioners, cultivating humanity and sensibility through art and cultural collaboration activities.

Kan Tai Wong

-           Kan Tai Wong began a long career as a photojournalist when he joined the Hong Kong Press in the late 1970s, after attending the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics to study photography.

Asia Art Archive

-           Asia Art Archive is a catalyst for new ideas that enrich our understanding of the world through the collection, creation, and sharing of knowledge around recent art in Asia. An independent non-profit, the archive documents the multiple and recent histories of art in Asia, with a valuable collection of art.

For more information, please visit https://www.taikwun.hk/en/programme/detail/booked-hong-kong-art-book-fair/1193.

#BOOKEDHK2023 #BOOKEDHK

— End —

Tai Kwun is delighted to announce the return of SPOTLIGHT: A Season of Performing Arts, which will showcase seven versatile performing arts programmes from April through May 2023. The programmes offer a wide spectrum of culture and talents from Hong Kong and the Mainland at Tai Kwun's distinctive venues and outdoor spaces, enabling talented local artists to produce work that is unique in nature with a focus on audience engagement, evolution and continuity.

This season’s SPOTLIGHT features original productions by all-new talent and returning artists who delighted audiences in 2021, continuing Tai Kwun’s dedication to establishing close and lasting collaborative relationships with artists in the performing arts community. Following Tri Ka Tsai and LauZone, multi-talented music artists Anna Lo and Rick Lau continue with the poignant yet playful The Farewell Comeback Tour, the third and final episode of the Hong Kong-style cabaret trilogy that sings tribute to the language and slang that shape the city’s generational identity. Choreographer and dancer Gigi Yang and visual artist Chow Chun Fai give witness to the stories in our lives through dance, images, and sound with The Forgiving Trees. Meanwhile, music and installations performance Since When, guided by the text of Chow Yiu Fai, music of Joyce Tang, visuals and installations of Chan Wai Lap and performances of iii (Iris Liu), Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and a choir of young signers, invites audiences to reclaim their lost sounds. Presenting tales of the diasporic community awash in magic realism, Guangzhou choreographer He Qiwo (ErGao) presents Butterfly Island, while playwright Chan Kwan Yee and director Yan Pat To make their collaborative debut with I will die in my home, a story told from the perspective of three generations of Hong Kong women about ancestral homes. Spanning across Tai Kwun is site-specific theatre The Sublime Progressions by award-winning Vividly, which takes theatregoers on an intimate journey of migration and diaspora that traverses time and space. Finally, the HKAPA drama students continue their work Last Ride, Fresh Eyes, developed in 2022 and enthrals with a podcast that encourages the audience to listen closely to the faint echoes and whispers of the city as they rally together support for Hong Kong artists.

Stretching across four weeks, SPOTLIGHT: A Season of Performing Arts invites

arts lovers and audiences across the city to celebrate the very best of performing artists inside Tai Kwun’s iconic and dazzling venues.

【Hong Kong-style Cabaret】The Farewell Comeback Tour │ 07–09.04.2023

A diva is preparing for her final show as her swan song…or is she? Following the critically acclaimed productions Tri Ka Tsai and LauZone created in Tai Kwun Performing Arts Season in 2019 and 2021, music artists Anna Lo and Rick Lau continue their musical odyssey in The Farewell Comeback Tour, the third and final instalment of the Hong Kong-style cabaret trilogy that examines our generational identity crisis through the evolution of language and slang. With playful music and drama, the show will tug at your heartstrings and tickle your funny bone.

Date & Time: 07 April 2023, 8pm; 08–­­­09 April 2023, 3pm and 8pm

Venue: JC Cube, Tai Kwun

Ticket: HK$280

【Dance X Moving Images X Sound】The Forgiving Trees │ 07–09.04.2023

In her first collaboration with Tai Kwun, dance artist Gigi Yang teams up with visual artist Chow Chun Fai, moving image designer Wilfred Wong and soundscape designer Lawrence Lau to create The Forgiving Trees, which transforms Tai Kwun's F Hall Studio into a new realm through dance, visuals, and music. The audience is encouraged to move around the F Hall Studio space to fully experience the immersive fusion of dance, moving images, and music.

Date & Time: 07–08 April 2023, 2pm and 7pm; 09 April 2023, 2pm

Venue: F Hall Studio, Tai Kwun

Ticket: HK$280

【Music x Installations】Since When │ 14–17.04.2023

Since When invites Tai Kwun audiences to embark on a quest of seeking, finding, remembering, imagining – hopefully recognising –­­ and reclaiming what used to belong to us. The production, a music and installation project in search of the lost voice, is the first lyrical and musical collaboration between lyricist Chow Yiu Fai and composer Joyce Tang. Together with visual artist Chan Wai Lap, singer iii (Iris Liu), Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and a team of young singers and sound archivers who will bring audience to various locations at Tai Kwun with theatrical experiences of the journey of lost and found.

Date & Time: 14 April 2023, 8pm; 15–16 April 2023, 4pm and 8pm; 17 April 2023, 8pm

Venue: JC Cube and Tai Kwun site-wide

Ticket: HK$280

【Dance Theatre】Butterfly Island │ 15–16.04.2023

Butterfly Island is the brainchild of the quirky and charismatic choreographer He Qiwo (ErGao), who is regarded as one of the Mainland’s brightest stars in contemporary dance. After hisproduction of Disco-teca blended visuals, installations and dance with kitsch-chic in Tai Kwun in 2018, ErGao has assembled a sizable number of visuals on diaspora for his most recent work, Butterfly Island, which features dancers from the millennial to Gen Z generations. Various spaces of Tai Kwun will be transformed into a “synthesise scene” for performances enveloped in magical realism, telling the tales of the fictional island nestled between the discordant past and unresolved future, where people from different regions and eras meet and bid farewell to each other, just as butterflies’ momentary encounters.

Date & Time: 15–16 April 2023, 1pm and 6pm

Venue: Prison Yard & F Hall Studio, Tai Kwun 

Ticket: HK$280

【Theatre】I will die in my home│21–23.04.2023

Local playwright Chan Kwan Yee and director Yan Pat To collaborate for the first time to chronicle the century-old ghosts that linger within Wan Chai. Set at Wan Chai, the narrative theatre traversing time and space sets forth a story a woman who chose to stay and a tale of bygone years that relates to the city’s cultural changes. The story begins with a home bought by a Hong Kong grandmother. Built in the last century and once the home of glitz, with guests coming and going, it is now the place where the grandmother prophesies to her daughter-in-law about her granddaughter’s eventual passing. I will die in my home explores the idea that people, just like homes, will be forgotten eventually… just like the unrecorded last words of abandoned souls.

Date & Time: 21 April 2023, 8pm; 22–23 April 2023, 3pm and 8pm

Venue: F Hall Studio, Tai Kwun

Ticket: HK$280

【Site-specific Theatre】The Sublime Progressions│28–30.04.2023; 01, 03–06.05.2023

As humans, we share a special bond with land on our planet Earth. As we survive and expand our footprint on land by establishing cities, we also heed the urge to wander and choose to roam and migrate. Following The Inner Études produced by artist group Vividly in Tai Kwun in 2021 – an immersive theatre inspired by the Victoria Prison and the geological history of Hong Kong’s granite rocks that received four nominations at the HK Theatre Libre Awards and became a Design Mark recipient of Taiwan's Golden Pin Design Award – The Sublime Progressions this year explores themes of migration and diaspora by species and tribes, taking audiences on a journey through time and space in Tai Kwun. Through multi-dimensional soundscapes, lighting, projections, scenery, and performances in various locations, the site-specific theatre offers audiences the chance to rediscover their connection to the land and revelations of life, overcoming challenges and venturing into the unknown.

Date & Time: 28–30 April 2023, 7pm and 9pm; 01, 03–06 May 2023, 7pm and 9pm

Venue: Site-wide, Tai Kwun

Ticket: HK$280

【Online Podcast】Last Ride, Fresh Eyes │ 04–05.2023

Created and produced by the Drama School of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Last Ride, Fresh Eyes first premiered in 2022 as an immersive online performance in Tai Kwun “Onstage Online”. This year, the team presents a five-episode podcast adaptation of Last Ride, Fresh Eyes that transports listeners on a recreated voyage, witnessing how the lives of four Hongkongers become intertwined during a hitchhike ride from Central to East Kowloon. Recorded with ASMR technology alongside rearranged original songs, echoes and whispers of our city have been reimagined in an original audio journey, where audiences can experience together how Hongkongers overcome their struggles with perseverance in the face of difficulties. We don’t know what’s going to happen to our city tomorrow, but at least we still have today.

Date & Time: April - May 2023 (Exact schedule to be announced)

Venue: Online

Ticket: Free

Please visit Tai Kwun website for more details.

The memories and spaces of Victoria Gaol—Hong Kong’s first prison—are the focus of Tai Kwun’s brand-new digital programme DigiRadiance. The heritage digital exhibition consists of two parts: a 30-minute immersive show transforming the F Hall Studio into an immersive project space; and five Augmented Reality checkpoints across the Prison Yard and D Hall that will take visitors on a nostalgic journey to explore Tai Kwun’s history.

Bringing the old Victoria Gaol to life, the new heritage digital exhibition at Tai Kwun, curated by Ying Kwok and Jims Lam, Curators of Heritage Department, allows visitors to experience the past by stepping into the digital world. The first and longest-operating prison in Hong Kong, Victoria Gaol, opened in 1841 and is said to be one of the first buildings constructed of durable material in the city. Now, reimagined and interpreted in a digital context, the prison has been transported back in time to visualise the development of law and order in Hong Kong from artists’ perspectives.

Placing emphasis on architectural materiality and spatial configuration of the 19th century Victoria Gaol, the DigiRadiance exhibition has been designed into two parts. The first programme presented at F Hall Studio takes the original radial plan of Victoria Gaol as a point of departure to revisit Tai Kwun’s prison history and its significance to Tai Kwun as a heritage compound today. Through a 30-minute immersive video experience created by artists Vvzela Kook and Ng Tsz Kwan, the visual production evokes the experience of imprisonment and guides visitors through the prison’s extended implications in societal discourse, such as discipline, punishment, and reform. In the second part, a journey through five Augmented Reality checkpoints across the Prison Yard and the D Hall then leads visitors on a continuous journey that explores Tai Kwun’s history.

Five carefully selected checkpoints centre around the ground-breaking radial plan prison, and its evolvement during the first hundred years when it was first built. The building had experienced dramatic changes, which reflect the changing needs for prison capacity and the ideology for imprisonment. Echoing the artists’ video, the checkpoints highlight the remaining structures of Victoria Gaol and demonstrate how architecture design and spatial configuration reflect the needs.

Ying Kwok, Curator of DigiRadiance and Senior Curator of Tai Kwun, said, “Through reimagining and reinterpreting our historical buildings in a digital context, we hope to bring our visitors back in time, not only to visualise how our buildings have evolved over time, but also to learn and understand how and why these buildings are designed and built as they had. And through these learnings, we hope the visitors can develop a deeper relationship with our historical site, and continue to value and treasure heritage sites such as Tai Kwun. “

DigiRadiance runs from 17 February to 16 March 2023 and starts on the hour and half-hour between 11am and 7pm every day (the last session begins at 6:30pm). Each show has a capacity of 30 people.

Join artists Vvzela Kook and Ng Tsz Kwan as Tai Kwun hosts an artist sharing session for DigiRadiance audiences on 7 March 2023. Together, the artists will delve into the making of DigiRadiance, the depths and challenges of creating cybernetic journeys, and much more. The session is open to the public and is free of charge.

Tai Kwun welcomes Dr Pi Li who joins Tai Kwun Culture & Arts Company Limited in the position of Head of Art, with effect from 13 February 2023. Dr Pi will be responsible for leading the Art Team in setting the overall artistic and curatorial direction, guiding strategy as well as the curation and presentation of art experiences at Tai Kwun. He joins Tai Kwun as the institution prepares to celebrate its 5^th anniversary, and assumes the role from Mr Tobias Berger, who conceived and led Tai Kwun’s contemporary art programme from the outset and, with a small but highly motivated team, rapidly established Tai Kwun Contemporary as a major player in the arts and culture landscape of Hong Kong. Dr Pi will build on this impressive legacy as Tai Kwun deepens its relationship with the Hong Kong public and sustains its commitment to support Hong Kong’ creativity and its emerging and established artists across genres and disciplines.

A veteran of the M+ museum project in Hong Kong for the past ten years, Dr Pi has worked there since 2012 as the Sigg Senior Curator and and then as Head of Curatorial Affairs at M+. Before joining M+, the exhibitions Dr Pi curated include Media City Seoul (2006), After Shock: Contemporary British Art 1990-2006 (2006), Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art (2002) and Moist: Asian-Pacific Media Art (2002). He also served as the curator for the Shanghai Biennial in 2002, and Allôrs la Chine at Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003. Dr Pi was the Chinese Fellow of Aspen Institute and obtained his PhD in art history from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Dr Pi Li, Head of Art at Tai Kwun, said, “It is my pleasure to join Tai Kwun as Head of Art, and am passionate about contributing to the rapidly evolving cultural landscape of Hong Kong with Tai Kwun being a vibrant platform of experiment, engagement, and dialogue with local and global art scene, and welcoming visitors from all over the world to experience truly world-class and moving art experiences.”

Mr Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts and Ms Chin Chin Teoh, Director of The Jockey Club CPS Limited said, “We are delighted to welcome Pi Li as the new Head of Art at Tai Kwun, and very much look forward to working closely with him to realize his vision for our contemporary art programme, which will build on the tremendous achievements of Tai Kwun’s high performing Art Department under Tobias’s energized and inspirational leadership. The Art Team is very excited about working with Pi Li, who is so highly regarded by his peers across the arts sector in Hong Kong and internationally, and we are very fortunate to be able to maintain an ongoing relationship with Tobias who becomes our Curator-at-large.”

The three themes of InnerGlow 2023—Particles, Geometry, and Neon—are combined with Hong Kong imagery and moods to welcome the Lunar New Year with the utmost elegance

Tai Kwun is set to captivate Hong Kong’s evening skies once again as the second season of InnerGlow takes on a deeper dimension from 26 January to 12 February 2023; inviting some of Hong Kong’s brightest and most original talents to join hands with the compound’s Creative Partner, The Electric Canvas, to devise and create an entirely new programme. Following the enormous public success of the first season of InnerGlow in September 2022, a new series of abstract themes will play with and animate the Parade Ground to such an extent that the imposing classical architectural elements are transformed, morphed and choreographed right before Hong Kong’s eyes.

While InnerGlow 2022 told the imagined history of the Barrack Block, InnerGlow 2023 takes audiences into an entirely different world in which the pure architecture of Tai Kwun becomes the main player. Those longing for a distant time in the city’s history will be delighted by the familiar Hong Kong images and moods woven into the show’s three themes of Particles, Geometry and Neon. Particles set off the show with a burst of fireworks and images of traditional Chinese festivities, while the foundational logic of mathematics, science, engineering and building structures are shifted in Geometry. Next, Neon takes one of the most defining genes of Hong Kong’s DNA, twisting and turning it into abstract forms into a celebration of the city’s vibrancy.

What’s more, InnerGlow 2023 grants audiences the unique opportunity to project light and shadow animations, such as Lunar rabbits, fireworks, Chinese lanterns and many more, on the spot through interactive technology placed on site. Visitors of the light extravaganza can project their creations onto the compound’s famous mango tree to show their creativity.

InnerGlow 2023 is created and produced by The Electric Canvas. Once again, it includes contributions from several individual Hong Kong illustrators and animators, recommended by Tai Kwun, ensuring that Hong Kong’s distinctive landscape is infused with the city’s unique style. This fine group of Hong Kong artists has assumed a greater role, joining filmmaker and Associate Director, Oliver Shing for InnerGlow 2023.  Shing directs several scenes in InnerGlow 2023 in a collaborative partnership with The Electric Canvas. Meanwhile, the dramatic and emotional soundtrack of InnerGlow 2023 is edited and produced by Roy Cheung.

InnerGlow has been devised as a multi-year project to bring an annual series of startling public events to Hong Kong by the world-renowned production company, The Electric Canvas. Through the event, Tai Kwun is developing homegrown talent in 3D architectural mapping, art direction, digital design, animation, illustrating, sound producing and technical delivery to enhance Hong Kong’s capability in this genre of large-scale public installations and entertainment. By January 2024, the creative lead will reside with the Hong Kong InnerGlow team as The Electric Canvas steps back to provide advice and mentorship in specific fields. 

The programme is made possible with core funding provided by The Hong Kong Jockey Club through its Charities Trust as one of Tai Kwun’s arts and heritage programmes, and CLP Holdings Limited as the Principal Sponsor.

Peter Milne, Managing Director and Technical Director of The Electric Canvas, remarks, “It seems like only yesterday that we were in Hong Kong delivering InnerGlow 2022 after the delays the inaugural project faced due to the pandemic. We are thrilled that InnerGlow 2023 is returning to its scheduled time slot in January and are excited to continue sharing our knowledge and experience with local skills and talent. It gives us great pleasure to be supporting the team at Tai Kwun for this second iteration of the event.”

Mrs. Betty Yuen, CLP Power Hong Kong Limited Chairman and CLP Holdings Limited Non-executive Director, says, “CLP prides itself as the energy partner of Hong Kong. For 122 years, we have been providing a reliable electricity supply, lighting up the city just like InnerGlow lights up our night sky. We are grateful that Tai Kwun is bringing this project back after a successful first edition, and this time coinciding with the Chinese New Year. InnerGlow sees the collaboration and exchange between overseas experts and local artists which exemplifies the core strength of Hong Kong as an international metropolis. We hope the light show will inject vitality and hope for the city’s great economic recovery in the Year of the Rabbit.”

Date:               26.01 – 12.02.2023 (except for 30.01 & 06.02.2023)

Time:              6:30pm, 7pm, 7:30pm, 8pm, 8:30pm, 9pm

Venue:            Parade Ground

Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to present Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, the first major survey exhibition on LGBTQ+ perspectives in Hong Kong. Curated by Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong, and co-presented with Sunpride Foundation, Myth Makers circles around the core notion of “queer mythologies”. At the same time, the exhibition explores contemporary mythologies and practices of the body by gathering a diverse range of artistic vocabularies related to LGBTQ+ perspectives from over 60 artists from Asia and its diasporas. Myth Makers includes over 100 artworks in all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries, with one third of the works loaned from Sunpride’s collection; the exhibition  expands on the “Spectrosynthesis” series, starting with Taipei, Bangkok, and now Hong Kong. Moreover, a publication collaboration with Queer Reads Library is also featured.

Myth Makers draws inspiration from artists addressing “queer mythologies”, who highlight either same-sex love/desire or gender fluidity as found in ancient belief systems and traditions in Asia. The exhibition also foregrounds the “new traditions” of our times, of spectacle and celebrity, playful and/or transgressive, along with non-normative bodily practices and histories in artworks by contemporary artists. The exhibition unfolds through three distinctive chapters and encompasses more than 100 works, which include new productions, historical works from the 1940s to the 1990s, and artworks on loan from the collection of the Sunpride Foundation. In bringing together such a plethora of artistic perspectives and vocabularies, Myth Makers endeavours to present a multiplicity of conversations, representations, and anti-representations of stories, individuals and communities. While the bulk of the exhibition focuses on living artists, some visionary and transformative figures of the past will also be underscored, including artists who lived in times when present-day LGBTQ+ identifications were not possible.

***

Chapter 1 Queer Mythologies: On and Off the Stage

“Queer Mythologies: On and Off the Stage” brings together artists who evoke mythological figures, creation stories, and traditions based on homoeroticism, androgyny, cross-dressing, and gender ambiguity. In doing so, they probe the possibilities of “queering” dominant cultural values—including religion—and highlight queer mythological representations that already exist in traditions across Asia. In counterpoint, other artists playfully unpack idol veneration in contemporary celebrity culture, a mass cultural formation with a significant role in weaving contemporary mythologies, which bind collective identities across the continent.

Chapter 2 Body Politics: Criminalisation, Control, and Counter-Narratives

“Body Politics: Criminalisation, Control, and Counter-Narratives” is firmly weighed down by the violence of history, delving into body politics, power, control, and criminalisation. Such themes moreover reflect the historic location of F Hall: originally a government printing shop, F Hall was later turned into a reception and fingerprinting office with remand cells as well as visitation booths. The physical venue thus offers a historical prism through which to engage the curatorial theme.

Chapter 3 Queer Futurities: Dematerialisation, Transformation, and New Vocabularies

“Queer Futurities: Dematerialisation, Transformation, and New Vocabularies” presents a darkness that suggests without revealing, for obscurity brings a sense of freedom, self-determination, and disinhibition. The body alludes and is alluded to, forming a ground for exploration and potentiality. By darkening the gallery space, the body is removed from sight, opening up the possibility for new meanings and horizons; at the same time, one moves away from a notion of the body as stable—in the imagination of Eurocentric science and medicine—or as sacred, as taught by different religions. On the contrary, the body is reconceived as a site of transformation and potentiality, made up of cells, atoms, organs: a site that can be disassembled, re-designed, and morphed. It is not a limit but a ground to be reclaimed.

Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will also host a wide range of public programming and educational events. These include “Tai Kwun Conversations” series; “Myth Makers After Hours” in collaboration with Dr. Sonia Wong, Corrupt the Youth, and various guests, deconstructs the world of Myth Makers from the perspectives of literature, philosophy, subculture and gender studies; Teacher’s Morning and Teacher’s Workshop; Family Day; other guided public tours. (See appendix)

Already rich in its gender offerings, the current heritage exhibition Gender & Space (until 15 January 2023) explores the contrasting elements of the former prison compound’s masculine and female traits. Past exhibitions have explored issues related to the body and sexuality at Tai Kwun, including; Performing Society: The Violence of Gender in 2019, which articulated power and made traces of brutality that had previously been concealed and rendered invisible, and, as well as My Body Holds Its Shape in 2020 and trust & confusion in 2021.

This exhibition contains sensitive and sexually explicit content that may not be suitable for children or young adults.

Exhibiting artists include

Bunny Cadag, Oscar Chan Yik Long, Shu Lea Cheang, Christopher Cheung, Isaac Chong Wai, Club Ate (Justin Shoulder & Bhenji Ra), Roy Dib, Jes Fan, Chitra Ganesh, Sadao Hasegawa, Fan Chon Hoo, Hosoe Eikoh, Hou Chun-Ming, Yuen Hsieh, Andrew Thomas Huang, Bones Tan Jones, Siren Eun Young Jung, Bhupen Khakhar, Jiaming Liao, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Zihan Loo, Ly Tran Quynh Giang, Zoë Marden & Sonia Wong Yuk Ying, Josef Ng, Patrick Ng Kah Onn, Alfonso Ossorio, Beatrix Pang, Ellen Pau, Sornchai Phongsa, Khairullah Rahim, Ren Hang, Anne Samat, Joshua Serafin, Tejal Shah, Shang Liang, Raqib Shaw, Sin Wai Kin, Sputniko!, Ho Tam, Hiram To, Kwong Chi Tseng, Virtue Village, Danh Vō, Wang Shui, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ka Ying Wong, Martin Wong, Wu Jiaru, Xiyadie, Maru Yacco, Yau Ching, Trevor Yeung, Alex Yiu & Kei Ying Wong, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Samson Young, Zheng Bo, Bruno Zhu

Queer Reads Library in the Artists’ Book Library

Can’t Get You Out of My Head: From Kary, to Hiram

A display with archival/personal ephemera and artworks from Kary Kwok, on his friendship and partnership with Hiram To; co-curated by Kary Kwok and Queer Reads Library.

Queer Reads Library_Corner

A display with over thirty new books and zines inspired by Myth Makers, including special selections by Queer Reads Library (Kaitlin Chan, Rachel Lau, Beatrix Pang).

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III

24 December 2022–10 April 2023

11am-7pm (Tuesdays to Sundays)

Closed on Mondays

Tai Kwun Contemporary

Special holiday schedule: open on public holidays (24–27 December 2022 and 1–2 January 2023) but closed for maintenance on 28 December 2022 and 3 January 2023.

For Chinese New Year, the galleries are closed on 22–23 January and 26 January 2023.

www.taikwun.hk

About the curator

Inti Guerrero

Independent curator and art historian, Inti Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He was the artistic Director of bap - bellas artes projects in the Philippines (2018–2022), the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016–2020), curator of the 38th EVA International, Limerick (2018) and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose. He has also curated or co-curated many exhibitions around the world, including: “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs” (touring at MCAD, Manila, Para Site, Hong Kong, and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016–2017);  “Afterwork” (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; and ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016–2017); “A Journal of the Plague Year” (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Cube, Taipei; Arko Art Center, Seoul; and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco; 2013–2015). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions. Recently, he was named co-Artistic Director of the upcoming 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024).

Chantal Wong

Chantal Wong is the co-founder of three charities in Hong Kong: Things That Can Happen, an art space set up to connect art to the socio-political context of the city; Learning Together, empowering refugee and asylum seeker youth to take on leadership through access to education, scholarships, and leadership training; and Women’s Festival, a platform promoting gender awareness and equality through public discourse. She is a Ford Global Fellow, a global community working to combat inequality brought together by the Ford Foundation.

From 2017 to 2021 she was the founding director of culture at Eaton in Hong Kong, a purpose-driven hospitality brand where she led a culture and programming team to transform the property into a champion for creativity, artistic experimentation and safe-space for intersectional communities, in particular those who have been historically marginalised, and activists. Prior to this she worked with Asia Art Archive, a research centre and archive of modern and contemporary art from Asia as head of strategy helping to build up an invaluable resource for the (re)writing of histories with post-colonial perspectives from the region.

The city’s cultural heart becomes the Christmas destination for the moments that matter

What’s the perfect gift for the holiday season? Often, it’s the intangible things that have the most lasting impression – those spontaneous smiles, those warm embraces, those moments shared together. Christmas is that special time of year where these little things take on an extra special meaning.

It’s this spirit that Tai Kwun and The Hong Kong Jockey Club (“HKJC”) have channelled this Christmas with Simple Gifts of Joy.

HKJC presents Simple Gifts of Joy

Simple Gifts of Joy is all about sharing in the joyous experiences that bring us together. It’s a month-long celebration of joy, giving and togetherness; where we can come together with family and friends, revel in the spirit of the season, and savour those moments that truly matter. The first of a series of annual festive celebrations presented by HKJC together with Tai Kwun, Simple Gifts of Joy aims to inspire the community through arts and culture and welcome new vibrancy and energy back to the city.

On 1 December, Tai Kwun transformed into a glorious festive destination full of colour, music and fun, where joyous performances came alive and filled the air with celebration. Of course, there is a Christmas tree – a grand, 12-metre-tall beauty that will be the centrepiece of Tai Kwun’s Parade Ground, accompanied every evening by a dazzling light show. Throughout the month, there are an array of circus performances, Christmas music, delightful surprises and hidden treats that create a unique festive atmosphere right across the complex.

Conserved and revitalised by HKJC, Tai Kwun has become Hong Kong’s beating cultural heart since opening in 2018 – a destination where heritage, world-class arts and culture, and rich stories all come together in a unique, joyous landmark for Hong Kong. And now, has become home of a whole new Christmas tradition for our city.

Tree of Togetherness

At the heart of Simple Gifts of Joy is a magical scene that sees Parade Ground transform in a sea of festive light, colour and music – a beautiful backdrop where families and friends celebrate together.

The Simple Gifts of Joy journey began across the Parade Ground: at the centre is the soaring, beautifully adorned Christmas tree that has become a festive Hong Kong icon. Every evening from 6pm – 9:30pm, the tree glows with a magical light show, creating a special atmosphere across the space. The historic buildings surrounding Parade Ground also come alive with a symphony of dramatic lighting.

Simple Gifts of Joy Light Show

The Gift of Music

The magic began with an opening concert and lighting ceremony on 1 December, where Bernard Chan, Steward of The Hong Kong Jockey Club, switched on the enchanting Christmas scenes together with the visitors. Bearing witness to the stunning Christmas tree light up, glittering and sparkling, the celebration of the joyful season was spent with one another. Continuing from 2 to 4 December, the newly founded Hong Kong choir NOĒMA performs three additional evenings of exquisite choral music under the baton of Sanders Lau.

Share the Joy

Christmas is a time for creating memories that will last a lifetime. As visitors make their way through Tai Kwun, they will come across festive “Snap the Joy” photobooths to capture those spontaneous moments of happiness with friends and family. Visitors can choose to print these photographs as a reminder of these special times or as heartfelt Christmas gifts to loved ones. The photobooths will be available for all Tai Kwun Fans and tenant customers, along with limited walk-in slots.

Special gifts will be given to Tai Kwun visitors to help them share and create happy memories. From specially curated gingerbread cookies to festive hard candies and popcorn, visitors will discover an array of delectable gifts and treats along the way.

To spread the cheer even further, there will be an interactive Festive Instagram Filter to add an extra touch of Christmas spirit to your social media.

“Snap the Joy” Photobooths

Tai Kwun Circus Plays

Inspiring the community through art, culture and heritage is at the heart of Tai Kwun and HKJC, the complex has transformed into a circus of fun with a rich programme of joyous performances, events and workshops. Tai Kwun Circus Plays features a line-up of diverse and delightful acts from around the world. Some of the highlights taking place across different locations of Tai Kwun include:

See the Appendix for details on all performances, events and workshops.

The Merriest of Markets and Meals

Over 30 outlets at Tai Kwun have already unloaded Santa’s sleigh and are ready to spread Christmas cheer with a mix of festive flavours, seasonal goodies, art presentations and hands-on craft experiences. The turkey isn’t the only thing that’s stuffed this season, as Executive Chef Junno Li of The Chinese Library presents a limited eight-course dinner to satisfy your Christmas cravings. Nibble on the city’s best Thai tidings and treats at Aaharn, while enjoying the view of Tai Kwun’s extraordinary Christmas tree over limited-edition dishes. One doesn’t need to travel to the North Pole to spot a reindeer as Stecco Natura presents a very special Reindeer Popsicle. PAZTA is rolling out toothsome plates and new traditions with their exquisite menu, while Dragonfly is serving up warm glasses of mulled wine spiked with spices and fruity sweetness.

Yulephiles can discover seasonal treasures from Tai Kwun’s incredible range of shops. If you are dreaming of a woodsy season, look no further than Ora-Ora: the art gallery will be showcasing paintings inspired by 18^th century Flemish tapestries, redolent of the heroic deeds of the forest. For those looking for family-friendly activities, PAP Studio will host a stained-glass photo frame workshop, giving everyone a chance to hone their skills from copper foil wrapping and colour dyeing. Meanwhile, Touch Ceramics is teaching everyone about Kwon-glazed porcelain painting with their wondrous Christmas workshop. 

Going on a shopping spree? Be rewarded upon spending HK$1,000 at TASCHEN Store and receive a complimentary handcrafted bookmark designed by renowned local designer ZOEE. Finally, warm up with tea-riffic gift sets from LockCha Tea Shop, as the teahouse is brewing up six floral teas to keep you cosy all season long. 

Your festive spirit is just waiting to be unwrapped! Find yourself inspired by Tai Kwun’s charming shops and restaurants as you stroll along Hong Kong’s winter wonderland.

Visitor information

All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must either provide a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass Direction. Some exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun may be subject to active checking of Vaccine Pass. Visitors are encouraged to plan their visits with the newly launched Visitor Planner via https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visitor_planner prior to visiting.

Programme details are subject to change; please refer to the Tai Kwun websites for news and updates. 

This December, Tai Kwun and The Hong Kong Jockey Club prepare for the solstice with the heart-warming theme of “Simple Gifts of Joy” to invite visitors to embrace a month-long celebration of joy, giving and togetherness as the city’s cultural heart becomes the Christmas destination for the moments that matter. Gleaming with good tidings and cheer, Tai Kwun relishes in the apricity of the season’s days to present the dazzling Tai Kwun Circus Plays, an immersive and magical bazaar for adults and children.

Host to an absolute cracker of concerts, Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard Festival: Music from within showcases the healing power of music, bringing together a series of intimate concerts featuring some of Hong Kong’s finest musicians and an extraordinary international ensemble and stellar soloist. Turning the spotlight onto gender and sexuality, Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III invites one to explore the core notions of “queer mythologies” and examine the emerging “new traditions” of our times, as spectacle and celebrity fuse into playful and transgressive art forms. Gender & Space adopts a gender lens to redress the underrepresentation of women in the gendered spaces of the Central Police Station compound from 1841 to 1941, bringing forth new ideas of representation and delineation in the broader context of Hong Kong’s urban history.

Then in January, InnerGlow 2023 returns triumphantly to rekindle the magic of 3D Mapping technology as it projects breath-taking animations and images onto the facades of Tai Kwun’s historic buildings to celebrate the New Year. Following in February, F Hall Studio will be transformed into an immersive digital project space with DigiRadiance, spotlighting Tai Kwun’s prison history and its significance in the early formation of Law and Order in Hong Kong.

HKJC Presents Simple Gifts of Joy

What’s the perfect gift for the holiday season? Often, it’s the intangible things that have the most lasting impression – those spontaneous smiles, those warm embraces, those moments shared together. Christmas is that special time of year where these little things take on an extra special meaning.

It’s this spirit that Tai Kwun and The Hong Kong Jockey Club (“HKJC”) are channelling this Christmas with Simple Gifts of Joy. It’s a month-long celebration of joy, giving and togetherness; where we can come together with family and friends, revel in the spirit of the season, and savour those moments that truly matter.

Starting from 1 December, Tai Kwun will transform into a glorious festive destination full of colour, music and fun, where joyous performances will come alive and fill the air with celebration. Of course, there will be a Christmas tree – a grand, 12-metre-tall beauty that will be the centrepiece of Tai Kwun’s Parade Ground, accompanied every evening by a dazzling light show. And during the month, there will be an array of circus performances, Christmas music, delightful surprises and hidden treats that will create a unique festive atmosphere right across the complex. (1 December 2022-2 January 2023)

Snap the Joy

Christmas is a time for creating memories that will last a lifetime. As visitors make their way through Tai Kwun, they will come across festive “Snap the Joy” photobooths to capture those spontaneous moments of happiness with friends and family. Join TK Fans for exclusive online registration.

Tai Kwun Circus Plays

"Tai Kwun Circus Plays" proudly enters its fifth edition! From December to January, circus veterans in town and around the world will get together at Tai Kwun to present an array of breathtaking contemporary circus performances. Let's have a merry juggling festive season together with our friends and family!

The circus season will kick off with an opening concert The Gift of Music by Noēma, the city's vocal ensemble, followed by LIFE Event No. 2 by the pioneering British circus group Gandini Juggling. UniCircle Flow from Japan will enthral audiences with their vigorous unicycling dance show, Rock It! Unicycle.

Only Bones v1.0, the award-winning solo show created by New Zealand physical theatre and mime artist Thomas Monckton, will come to Tai Kwun to deliver to audiences a joyful Christmas. Local creative team TS Crew, veteran choreographer Mui Cheuk Yin, and emerging local circus talents, will add a local touch and bring street vbes to life in Ho! Ho! Ho! Monkey King is Coming To Town and New Boom In Circus. The annual circus carnival will culminate with the Ting-koo-ki Mad Skills Gala and Battle (TKK), a passionate circus battle between top non-local jugglers from Taiwan, Costa Rica, Belgium and Brazil, as we welcome the arrival of 2023 at Tai Kwun.

Prison Yard Festival: Music from within

Prison Yard Festival: Music from within celebrates the healing power of music. By bringing together individual musicians, ensembles and audiences, the Festival creates and shares the unique and intimate setting of the Prison Yard in which music leads us from poised introspection to extrovert joy.

True to its title, Music from within begins indoors, in JC Cube. The festival opens with LENK Quartet performing French composer Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. The monumental Goldberg Variations are heard in a new light when pianist Rachel Cheung and lighting designer Amy Chan collaborate to realise Bach’s great keyboard composition from 1737 through a distinctly 21st century lens.

Music emerges from within as the outdoor stage of the Prison Yard hosts a series of highly atmospheric evening concerts, including two chamber concerts by some of the finest musicians from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. Revered Hong Kong pianist Nancy Loo will perform Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata under the December full moon. The Prison Yard Festival will close with the unstoppable energy of baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro with their stellar soloist Jakub Józef Orliński, making his Asian debut with two nights of dazzling virtuosity from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. (30 November–10 December 2022; Prison Yard & JC Cube; Tickets are available at URBTIX & art-mate.net)

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III circles around the core notion of “queer mythologies” and delves into modern and contemporary mythologies along with practices of the body, by gathering a diverse range of artistic idioms related to LGBTQ+ perspectives from over 50 artists from Asia and its diasporas.

The exhibition draws inspiration from artists addressing “queer mythologies”, who highlight either same-sex love/desire or gender fluidity as found in ancient belief systems and traditions in Asia. At the same time, the exhibition also highlights the “new traditions” of our times, of spectacle and celebrity, playful and/or transgressive, along with non-normative bodily practices and histories in artworks by contemporary artists.

Curated by Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong, and co-presented with Sunpride Foundation, Myth Makers includes over 100 artworks in all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries, with one third of the works loaned from Sunpride’s collection. As such, Myth Makers is the first major institutional survey exhibition on LGBTQ+ perspectives in Hong Kong, and expands on the Spectrosynthesis series, which previously showed in Taipei, Bangkok, and now Hong Kong. The exhibition also includes a special publication collaboration with Queer Reads Library. (24 December 2022–10 April 2023; free admission; JC Contemporary and 1/F F Hall)

DigiRadiance

DigiRadiance is a brand-new digital programme that transforms the F Hall Studio into an immersive project space.

The first programme takes the original radial plan of Victoria Gaol as a point of departure revisiting Tai Kwun’s prison history and its significance in the early formation of Law and Order in Hong Kong. Victoria Gaol is the first prison in Hong Kong and forms a significant part of the heritage compound. By exploring the architectural materiality and spatial configuration, it exposes the experience of imprisonment and its extended implication in societal discourse such as discipline, punishment, and reform.  (16 February–16 March 2023; free admission; F Hall Studio)

InnerGlow 2023

Following the enormous public success of the first InnerGlow in September, this engrossing project takes on a deeper dimension in January 2023 as some of Hong Kong’s brightest and most original talent joins hands with our Creative and Technical Partner, The Electric Canvas, to devise and create an entirely new program for January 2023.

While the first InnerGlow told an imagined history of the Barrack Block, InnerGlow 2023 will take audiences into an entirely different world in which the pure architecture of Tai Kwun becomes the main player in a series of abstract themes which play with and animate the building itself to such an extent that all of those imposing classical architectural elements are transformed, morphed and choreographed right before our (disbelieving) eyes. The show will make references to familiar Hong Kong images and moods, ranging from fireworks and traditional festivities to the unique handwriting of Hong Kong neon, and at times will defy the very the foundational logic of our building’s geometry. (26 January–12 February 2023; nightly from 6:30pm; Parade Ground)

Principal Sponsor: CLP Holdings Limited

On-going Programme

Gender & Space

Gender equality is a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world. How far have we come in the quest for gender equality in our city? Can the past illuminate the present and provide insight into a better future? The new heritage exhibition Gender & Space adopts a gender lens to revisit the history of our heritage site over its first hundred years from 1841 to 1941. It seeks to redress the underrepresentation of women in the gendered spaces of the Central Police Station compound by sharing the stories and experiences of those often overlooked to fill a gap in its history. The exhibition further explores women’s experience in both the private and public spheres. Visitors are confronted with questions and structural issues surrounding gender inequality in the wider society of old Hong Kong.

In the exhibition space, there is a symbolic, mirror-clad platform, which visitors are invited to ascend and complete the exhibition experience by reflecting on their gender roles and identities. Named “Gender Salon,” this space for community engagement comprises a roster of over 10 dialogues that touch on diverse subjects and visualises the relationship between gender and space in the contemporary cultural context. Together with the exhibition, this inclusive space invites reflection on how every individual has the power to bring positive change and help build an equal and inclusive society. (5 November 2022–15 January 2023; free admission; Block 01 Duplex Studio)

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm.

Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must either provide a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass direction. Some exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun may be subject to active checking of Vaccine Pass. Visit the Tai Kwun website for more details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

— End —

The new heritage exhibition revisits gender and space in the historic compound of Tai Kwun to uncover hidden stories of underrepresented and forgotten women both in and outside the site.

Hong Kong, Friday, 4 November 2022

Tai Kwun is delighted to announce the new heritage exhibition Gender & Space, running from 5 November 2022 to 15 January 2023, curated by Dr. Anita Chung, Head of Heritage.

The programming of the Heritage team has been strategically building on the value of heritage to contribute to sustainable development, while harnessing the power of culture as a driver of change. Recent programmes include Tai Kwun Conversations: UNESCO Series and the summer exhibition Breathing with Trees. Now, a new heritage exhibition focuses on gender, which will run in parallel with another forthcoming gender-related exhibition presented by Tai Kwun Contemporary.

Gender & Space focuses on underrepresented or forgotten women in history, asking essential questions, such as how far we have come in the quest for gender equality in our city, and whether the past can illuminate the present and provide insights for a better future? Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio shifts back in time to bring women out of the shadows of history and opens up new, transformative spaces for contemporary dialogue on gender issues.

The exhibition adopts a gender lens to revisit the first hundred years of history of the Central Police Station compound, from 1841 to 1941. Using photographic images, architectural drawings, and archival information to support curatorial interpretation, the exhibition uncovers hidden traces of gendered spaces and invisible women in a historic place of power and masculinity—a man’s world designed by and for men. The alternative stories fill a gap in the site’s history, which scarcely mentions the women in the workforce who supported its operations, the expatriate wives who made their homes in Hong Kong, and gender-related crime and imprisonment issues.

Visitors to Gender & Space are also confronted with questions and structural issues surrounding gender inequality in the wider society of old Hong Kong. The exhibition explores women’s experience in both the private and public spheres. It includes stories of the powerless and marginalised, as well as those who exercised female agency to advocate change. The show offers a diverse picture of power relations in the construction of gender and space.

In the exhibition space, there is a symbolic, mirror-clad platform, which visitors are invited to ascend and complete the exhibition experience by reflecting on their gender roles and identities. Named “Gender Salon,” this is also an inclusive space for community engagement in gender dialogue. It comprises a roster of over 10 dialogues that touch on diverse subjects, including minority voices, the male gaze, sex work and human trafficking, and domestic carers; two workshops on the traditional weaving of patterned ribbons of Hakka and Weitou women; and a “bridal laments” performance by women from Lung Yeuk Tau village in Fanling. The Salon visualises the relationship between gender and space in the contemporary cultural context. All Gender Salon programmes are open to the public and are free of charge, apart from the workshops.

Gender & Space invites reflection on how every individual has the power to bring about positive change and help build an equal and inclusive society. Dr. Anita Chung, Head of Heritage of Tai Kwun and curator of the exhibition, said, “Gender & Space is designed as a safe and reflective space for engaging in meaningful discussion on gender and social equity. We seek to understand history from multiple perspectives, acknowledging not only the different forms of inequality, but also their underlying causes. It is crucial to examine the structures in place and the interlocking systems of power that determine who is free or unfree, powerful or powerless, and dominant or subordinate. Gender & Space shows that gender identity is complex, multi-layered and ever-changing, and why we must challenge discriminatory practices and address the needs and aspirations of all members of society to bring about positive change.”

In parallel with Gender & Space, Tai Kwun will present Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, another gender-related exhibition to explore alternative gender representations, queer mythologies, and practices of the body from new and exciting perspectives, from 24 December 2022 to 10 April 2023 at JC Contemporary.

Gender Salon—Public Programme Details:

All Gender Salon: Dialogues are open to the public and are free of charge.

Admission fee for workshops: $100 per person, $160 Family Pass (1 Adult, 1 Child); register on the Tai Kwun website.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/programme/detail/gender-salon/1105 .

Gender & Space

Curated by Dr Anita Chung, Head of Heritage, Tai Kwun

5.11.2022–15.1.2023

11am–7pm

Block 01 Duplex Studio, Tai Kwun

https://www.taikwun.hk/en/programme/detail/gender-and-space/1083

Bringing out the healing power of music, Tai Kwun immerses audiences in six unique star-studded programmes from indoors to outdoors

Having showcased the unique and intimate atmosphere which can be conjured by the dramatically walled Prison Yard during 2019’s Projekt Berlin, Tai Kwun unveils a new Prison Yard Festival: Music from within, stretching from 30^th November to 10^th December 2022. For 11 days, Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard will be transformed into a performance space with a magical atmosphere not found anywhere else in the city, a natural home for music to take one on a heartwarming and soul-searching journey. Musicophiles are invited to find solace inside the festival, as the healing power of music liberates us from feelings of isolation, reminding the city of the joy it feels when we are all reunited.

Prison Yard Festival: Music from within brings together like-minded musicians, ensembles of fine instrumentalists, composers, performers, and, of course, audiences to create and share music in the unique and intimate setting of the Prison Yard. 6 broad-ranging performances will be presented. Amongst them, the unmissable highlight is the long-awaited Asian debut of Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński with the fine Italian ensemble il Pomo d’Oro as the Festival’s finale.

True to its title, Music from within begins indoors, in the JC Cube. And true to its location overlooking the Prison Yard, the festival opens with LENK Quartet performing music written “on the inside”. French composer Olivier Messiaen was a prisoner in a German prisoner-of-war camp in Poland in 1940 and composed Quartet for the End of Time for himself and three fine musicians who were among the other POWs in the camp. Through his extraordinary imagination, Messiaen led his ensemble, and his audience, in an escape from the confines of prison, flying above the material world in cosmic freedom. “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.”

The monumental Goldberg Variations are heard in a new light when pianist Rachel Cheung and lighting designer Amy Chan collaborate to realise Bach’s great keyboard composition from 1741 through a distinctly 21^st-century lens.

Music emerges from within as the outdoor stage of the Prison Yard hosts a series of highly atmospheric evening concerts, including two chamber concerts by some of the finest musicians from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. Revered Hong Kong pianist Nancy Loo will perform Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata under the December full moon.

The Prison Yard Festival will close with the unstoppable energy of baroque ensemble il Pomo d’Oro with the stellar Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, making his Asian debut with two nights of dazzling virtuosity from the 17th and 18th centuries. Orliński is known as one of the world’s leading singers, triumphing on stage, in concert, and on recording, with sold-out concerts and recitals throughout Europe and the United States.

Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard Festival: Music from within will be staged from 30 November to 10 December 2022 at Prison Yard and JC Cube; tickets for the programmes are available at URBTIX and art-mate.net. Please visit Tai Kwun website for the programme details.

LENK’s Quartet for the End of Time│30.11.2022          
Performed by: LENK Quartet

Date & Time: 30 November 2022, 7pm
Venue: JC Cube, Tai Kwun
Ticket: $250

Goldberg illuminations│02-03.12.2022

Performed by: Rachel Cheung (piano)

Lighting Designer: Amy Chan

Date & Time: 2 - 3 December 2022, 7pm

Venue: JC Cube, Tai Kwun

Ticket: $250

Solitary reunion│05.12.2022

Performed by: Wang Liang (violin), Gui Li (violin), Sun Yu (viola), Richard Bamping (cello), and Avan Yu (piano)

Date & Time: 5 December 2022, 7pm

Venue: Prison Yard, Tai Kwun

Ticket: $300

“Music from within” by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra│07.12.2022                

Performed by: Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra
Date & Time: 7 December 2022, 7pm
Venue: Prison Yard, Tai Kwun
Ticket: $300

Beethoven by moonlight│08.12.2022

Performed by: Nancy Loo (piano)

Date & Time: 8 December 2022, 7pm

Venue: Prison Yard, Tai Kwun

Ticket: $300

Il Pomo d’Oro & Jakub Józef Orliński (Asian debut) │09–10.12.2022

Performed by: Il Pomo d’Oro, Jakub Józef Orliński (Countertenor) *Asian debut
Date & Time: 9–10 December 2022, 7:30pm
Venue: Prison Yard, Tai Kwun
Ticket: $680

Ticket Discount

• Patrons may enjoy one of the below discount schemes for each purchase where applicable:
• 40% off for Senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities and their minder and full-time students. Available on a first-come-first-served basis.
• 15% off for Tai Kwun Fans with valid discount code. Available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Prison Yard Festival Package Discount

• Each purchase of standard tickets for 2 different concerts (10% off)
• Each purchase of standard tickets for 3 different concerts (15% off)
• Each purchase of standard tickets for 4 different concerts (20% off)
• Each purchase of standard tickets for 5 different concerts (25% off)
• These discounts do not include the concerts of "Il Pomo d'Oro & Jakub Józef Orliński"

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm.

Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. Please check the Tai Kwun website for the latest anti-pandemic arrangements: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm (closed on Mondays).

Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must provide either a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass directive. Exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun are subject to active checking of Vaccine Passes. Cleaning frequency is being stepped up for high contact surfaces throughout the day, and hand sanitiser stations are available throughout Tai Kwun. Visit the Tai Kwun website for more details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

— End —

Editor’s notes:

Please click here to download hi-res images with captions.

About Tai Kwun — Centre for Heritage and Arts (Tai Kwun)

Tai Kwun is Hong Kong’s Centre for Heritage and Arts — a cultural destination for inspiration, stimulation and enjoyment. We aspire to offer the best heritage and arts experiences, and to cultivate knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history in the community.

Tai Kwun invites all visitors on a journey of discovery that unites across multiple genres of arts, heritage, culture and lifestyle in Hong Kong.  Here, visitors will discover the rich heritage of the site through the thematic exhibitions and immersive public programmes that explore Hong Kong’s history and culture, alongside a multitude of vibrant and inclusive contemporary art presentations and performing arts offerings all year round.

Opened in May 2018 and operating on a not-for-profit model, Tai Kwun is the fruition of a joint partnership between The Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Government of the HKSAR to conserve and revitalise the buildings of the historic Central Police Station compound, which represents one of the most significant revitalisation projects in Hong Kong. The site comprises three Declared Monuments of Hong Kong – the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison – all have been meticulously conserved, with unfailing attention to authenticity. The site also includes two new buildings – JC Contemporary and JC Cube, by renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron – and several outdoor spaces – Parade Ground, Prison Yard and Laundry Steps – providing an exciting venue for the public programmes presented by Tai Kwun and its partners.

Tai Kwun, which means “big station” in Chinese, is the colloquial name used by Hong Kong people to refer to the former police headquarters and the surrounding compound. The name has been adopted as a reminder of the historical importance of this living heritage site.

In 2019, Tai Kwun received the Award of Excellence in the 2019 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. This is the highest honour of the prestigious Awards, which bestows an international recognition of the outstanding achievement in the conservation and revitalisation efforts of Tai Kwun.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.TaiKwun.hk.

For more information, please contact:

Hong Kong, 28 October 2022, Friday

Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to announce Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, an upcoming exhibition on view from 24 December 2022 to 10 April 2023. As one of the first major exhibitions on LGBTQ+ perspectives in Hong Kong, Myth Makers circles around the core notion of “queer mythologies”. At the same time, the exhibition explores contemporary mythologies and practices of the body by gathering a diverse range of artistic idioms related to LGBTQ+ perspectives from over 50 artists from Asia and its diasporas. Curated by Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong, and co-presented with Sunpride Foundation, Myth Makers includes over 100 artworks in all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries, with one third of the works loaned from Sunpride’s collection; the exhibition furthermore includes a publication collaboration with Queer Reads Library. Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III also expands on the “Spectrosynthesis” series from Taipei, Bangkok, and now Hong Kong.

Myth Makers draws inspiration from artists addressing “queer mythologies”, who highlight either same-sex love and desire or gender fluidity as found in ancient belief systems and traditions in Asia. The exhibition also foregrounds the “new traditions” of our times, of spectacle and celebrity, playful and/or transgressive, along with non-normative bodily practices and histories in artworks by contemporary artists. The exhibition unfolds through three distinctive chapters and encompasses more than 100 works, which include new productions, historical works from the 1950s to the 1990s, and artworks on loan from the collection of the Sunpride Foundation. In bringing together such a plethora of artistic perspectives and vocabularies, Myth Makers endeavours to present a multiplicity of conversations, representations, and anti-representations of stories, individuals and communities. While the bulk of the exhibition focuses on living artists, some visionary and transformative figures of the past will also be underscored, including artists who lived in times when present-day LGBTQ+ identifications were not possible.

In parallel with Myth Makers, Tai Kwun will present the new heritage exhibition Gender & Space, a thematically related exhibition that explores gender from an alternative perspective and reveal hidden traces of women (5 November 2022 to 15 January 2023; Duplex Studio, Block 01).

Exhibiting artists include

Bunny Cadag, Oscar Chan Yik Long, Shu Lea Cheang, Christopher Cheung, Isaac Chong Wai, Club Ate (Justin Shoulder & Bhenji Ra), Roy Dib, Jes Fan, Chitra Ganesh, Sadao Hasegawa, Fan Chon Hoo, Hosoe Eikoh, Hou Chun-Ming, Yuen Hsieh, Andrew Thomas Huang, Bones Tan Jones, Siren Eun Young Jung, Bhupen Khakhar, Jiaming Liao, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Zihan Loo, Ly Tran Quynh Giang, Zoe Marden & Sonia Wong Yuk Ying, Josef Ng, Patrick Ng Kah Onn, Alfonso Ossorio, Beatrix Pang, Ellen Pau, Sornchai Phongsa, Khairullah Rahim, Ren Hang, Anne Samat, Josh Serafin, Tejal Shah, Shang Liang, Raqib Shaw, Sin Wai Kin, Sputniko, Ho Tam, Hiram To, Kwong Chi Tseng, Virtue Village, Danh Vō, Wang Shui, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ka Ying Wong, Martin Wong, Wu Jiaru, Xiyadie, Maru Yacco, Yau Ching, Trevor Yeung, Alex Yiu & Kei Ying Wong, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Samson Young, Zheng Bo, Bruno Zhu

About the curator

Inti Guerrero

Independent curator and art historian, Inti Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He was the artistic Director of bap - bellas artes projects in the Philippines (2018–2022), the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016–2020), curator of the 38th EVA International, Limerick (2018) and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose. He has also curated or co-curated the exhibitions: “Institute for Tropical and Galactical Studies” in Yokohama Triennale 2020, Yokohama Museum of Art; “Ming Wong. Your Special Island” at the CCP Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019); “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs” (touring at MCAD, Manila, Para Site, Hong Kong, and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016–2017); “Udlot-Udlot: on Jose Maceda” at Asia Art Archive (2016);  “Afterwork” (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; and ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016–2017); “A Journal of the Plague Year” (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Cube, Taipei; Arko Art Center, Seoul; and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco; 2013–2015). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world. Recently, he was named co-Artistic Director of the upcoming 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024).

Chantal Wong

Chantal Wong is the co-founder of three charities in Hong Kong: Things That Can Happen, an art space set up to connect art to the socio-political context of the city; Learning Together, empowering refugee and asylum seeker youth to take on leadership through access to education, scholarships, and leadership training; and Women’s Festival, a platform promoting gender awareness and equality through public discourse. She is a Ford Global Fellow, a global community working to combat inequality brought together by the Ford Foundation.

From 2017 to 2021 she was the founding director of culture at Eaton in Hong Kong, a purpose-driven hospitality brand where she led a culture and programming team to transform the property into a champion for creativity, artistic experimentation and safe-space for intersectional communities, in particular those who have been historically marginalised, and activists. Prior to this she worked with Asia Art Archive, a research centre and archive of modern and contemporary art from Asia as head of strategy helping to build up an invaluable resource for the (re)writing of histories with post-colonial perspectives from the region.

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm.

Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. Please check the Tai Kwun website for the latest anti-pandemic arrangements: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm, while Tai Kwun Contemporary at JC Contemporary is open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm (closed on Mondays).

Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must provide either a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass directive. Exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun are subject to active checking of Vaccine Passes. Cleaning frequency is being stepped up for high contact surfaces throughout the day, and hand sanitiser stations are available throughout Tai Kwun. Visit the Tai Kwun website for more details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

— End —

Welcoming the mid-autumn season, Tai Kwun offers a dreamlike experience blending its rich history and radiant future through the multi-media innovations of lightshow InnerGlow

Tai Kwun is very proud to announce the premiere season of InnerGlow – the first of what will be an annual season of breath-taking animated digital projections onto several of Tai Kwun’s historic facades, with core funding provided  by The Hong Kong Jockey Club through its Charities Trust as one of Tai Kwun’s arts and heritage programmes, and CLP Holdings Limited as the Principal Sponsor of this year’s programme. A complex array of powerful projection equipment has been installed in precise locations across the Parade Ground to support cutting-edge 3D projection technology which will transform Tai Kwun’s grand 19^th Century buildings into living, breathing characters with a wealth of stories to tell, underscored by a nostalgic soundtrack.

In this first season of InnerGlow, the Parade Ground becomes a 3D wonderland of animated projections as our grand old Barrack Block takes on human form - a world-weary dowager whose drowsy slumber and unreliable memories evoke nostalgia, pride, drama, excitement and rebirth in a series of reminiscences which dreamily blur fact and fiction. Through the haze emerge scenes which contain fleeting glimpses of the building’s history, but veer off-course as they mix and meld with dreams and other memories – a car chase in hot pursuit of a crime boss; high tea in Madame Fù’s salon during the height of art deco chic in the 1930s; the feint pencil lines of an architect’s ambitious plans sketched half a world away; an air-raid which scarred the whole city; turbaned police officers on parade; a devastating typhoon. Storm-damaged and battle-weary, this grand old dame is not ready for her close-up, Mr de Mille. She’s ready for a major makeover.

An action-packed 12 minutes encompassing 160 years of memories, InnerGlow will be shown five times each night from 10 September, on the half-hour commencing at 7pm. In addition a special light installation has been created for the Pottinger Ramp which, for the two week season of InnerGlow becomes the Pottinger River flowing fancifully into Hollywood Road.

Tai Kwun is honoured to be collaborating with The Electric Canvas as creative and technical partner for InnerGlow. The Electric Canvas has been responsible for many of the most awe-inspiring architectural projection mapping shows which have illuminated Sydney winters in the last 12 years, as part of the festival of light, music and ideas - Vivid Sydney. Not only has The Electric Canvas created a unique and brand new show exclusively for Tai Kwun, they have invited a number of Hong Kong artists, illustrators and animators to contribute to this first version of InnerGlow and will expand the circle of Hong Kong involvement in 2023 and 2024 by inviting young professionals and emerging artists in relevant fields to take up more and more of the creative and technical roles, under The Electric Canvas’s guidance and mentorship, thereby investing deeply in capacity building in Hong Kong to sustain future creative projects. The participation of The Electric Canvas in InnerGlow has been made possible with the financial support of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations – an Australian Government initiative.

Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts, says, “Tai Kwun is immensely grateful for the combined support of our founder and funder, The Hong Kong Jockey Club, Principal Sponsor, CLP Holdings Limited and the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations which together have enabled us to collaborate with our creative and technical partner The Electric Canvas on such a grand scale. Not only is The Electric Canvas creating this first InnerGlow exclusively for Tai Kwun, but they are also generously sharing their knowhow, expertise, creativity and vast experience with a core group of young Hong Kong professionals in order to build up Hong Kong’s capability in this exciting field and to take on increasing roles in InnerGlow in future years. We are thrilled to be offering the people of Hong Kong an eye-opening new experience right here in the heart of Central and look forward to building on the inventiveness and creativity year-on-year when InnerGlow returns in 2023 and beyond, sparking curiosity and anticipation as each new show is unveiled.”

Peter Milne, Managing Director and Technical Director of The Electric Canvas, remarks, “The Electric Canvas is delighted to be back in Hong Kong and to be given the opportunity to assist the creative and technical teams at Tai Kwun in the creation of a bespoke projection mapping installation for the inaugural InnerGlow event.  The opportunity to work with local skills and talent will provide valuable sharing of knowledge and experience to assist Tai Kwun to expand the InnerGlow festival from year to year.”

Mr William Mocatta, Vice Chairman of CLP Holdings Limited, says, “We are delighted to be supporting this exciting programme which brings together world-class visual arts, local heritage and technology at this conserved and revitalised hub. CLP and Tai Kwun have much in common – both being staunch supporters of arts development, appreciation of history and innovation. Most importantly, we both have a long heritage that mirrors the colourful development of Hong Kong. That’s why CLP is proud to be the Principal Sponsor of InnerGlow, a project that combines international expertise and local creativity to tell the good story of Hong Kong. I hope it will be a source of positivity and energy for the community during the Mid-autumn Festival.”

— End —

Editor’s notes:

Date:               10 – 25.9.2022 (except for 19.9.2022)

Time:               7pm, 7:30pm, 8pm, 8:30pm, 9pm (duration: 12 minutes)

Venue:            Parade Ground

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm.

All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must either provide a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass Direction. Exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun are subject to active checking of Vaccine Pass. The frequency of cleansing is being stepped up for high-contact surfaces throughout the day, and hand sanitiser stations are available throughout Tai Kwun. Visit the Tai Kwun website for more details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

About Tai Kwun — Centre for Heritage and Arts

Tai Kwun is Hong Kong’s Centre for Heritage and Arts — a cultural destination for inspiration, stimulation and enjoyment. We aspire to offer the best heritage and arts experiences, and to cultivate knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history in the community.

Tai Kwun invites all visitors on a journey of discovery that unites across multiple genres of arts, heritage, culture and lifestyle in Hong Kong. Here, visitors will discover the rich heritage of the site through the thematic exhibitions and immersive public programmes that explore Hong Kong’s history and culture, alongside a multitude of vibrant and inclusive contemporary art presentations and performing arts offerings all year round.

Opened in May 2018 and operating on a not-for-profit model, Tai Kwun is the fruition of a joint partnership between The Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Government of the HKSAR to conserve and revitalise the buildings of the historic Central Police Station compound, which represents one of the most significant revitalisation projects in Hong Kong. The site comprises three Declared Monuments of Hong Kong – the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison – all have been meticulously conserved, with unfailing attention to authenticity. The site also includes two new buildings – JC Contemporary and JC Cube, by renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron – and several outdoor spaces – Parade Ground, Prison Yard and Laundry Steps – providing an exciting venue for the public programmes presented by Tai Kwun and its partners.

Tai Kwun, which means “big station” in Chinese, is the colloquial name used by Hong Kong people to refer to the former police headquarters and the surrounding compound. The name has been adopted as a reminder of the historical importance of this living heritage site.

In 2019, Tai Kwun received the Award of Excellence in the 2019 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. This is the highest honour of the prestigious Awards, which bestows an international recognition of the outstanding achievement in the conservation and revitalisation efforts of Tai Kwun.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.TaiKwun.hk.

About The Electric Canvas

The Electric Canvas is the Southern Hemisphere’s only dedicated building projection specialist. Established in 1997, we’ve delivered hundreds of projects at home and abroad presenting architectural mapping, field of play and large-scale immersive projections.

Throughout the past two decades we’ve built unrivalled experience and have continually expanded our resources and skills, earning us an enviable reputation as a trusted collaborator and production partner. Our ability to provide innovative solutions to challenging briefs is well known.

We also offer invaluable advice and expert consultancy on permanent and/or mixed technology installations.

About The CLP Group

The CLP Group is one of the largest investor-owned power businesses in Asia Pacific with investments across Hong Kong, Mainland China, Australia, India, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Hong Kong-listed CLP Holdings Limited is the holding company for the CLP Group, which has a diversified portfolio of generating assets that uses a wide range of fuels including coal, gas, nuclear and renewable sources.

Through CLP Power Hong Kong Limited, the Group operates a vertically integrated electricity supply business that provides a highly reliable supply of electricity to 80% of Hong Kong’s population. In Mainland China, the CLP Group is the largest external investor in the energy sector on the Mainland with a focus on low-carbon energy. In Australia, the Group’s wholly-owned subsidiary EnergyAustralia is a leading integrated energy company, providing gas and electricity to about 2.45 million households and businesses. Apraava Energy (formerly known as CLP India) is one of India’s biggest renewable energy producers with operations in power generation and transmission.

CLP Holdings is included in the Global Dow – a 150-stock index of the world’s leading blue-chip companies, the Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index (DJSI Asia Pacific), the Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific 40 Index (DJSI Asia Pacific 40), the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index Series and the FTSE4Good Index series.

Tai Kwun itself is set to shine in September with the unveiling of a whole new open-air experience every evening starting from the Mid-Autumn Festival. InnerGlow converts the Parade Ground into a 3D wonderland of animated projections as our grand old Barrack Block takes on human form-a world-weary dowager whose drowsy slumber and unreliable memories evoke nostalgia, pride, drama, excitement and rebirth in a series of reminiscences which dreamily blur fact and fiction. InnerGlow is the whimsical dessert of a 3-course evening in Tai Kwun which starts with a relaxed happy hour of jazz or world music (Chilled Steps) followed by full immersion into the vivid imagination of Pipilotti Rist (Behind Your Eyelid) and concluding after sundown in the Parade Ground, ideally with a drink and a snack. In November, Tai Kwun traces the stories of invisible women in Gender & Space giving voice to the silent generations of women in the private and public spaces of old Hong Kong. The comfort, solace and healing power of music is the theme of the Prison Yard Festival when the historic granite walls resonate with Music from within.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club not only conserved and revitalised Tai Kwun, but also through its Charities Trust provides the core funding for Tai Kwun’s arts and heritage programmes.

InnerGlow

This autumn, a new signature event designed for the whole family will light up the Parade Ground every evening during a 3-week season. InnerGlow uses the latest digital and 3D mapping technology to project breathtaking animations and images onto the facades of our historic buildings on a massive scale. In this show, specially created for us by The Electric Canvas in collaboration with Hong Kong artists, our beloved 160-year-old Barrack Block assumes almost human form-a grand old dame, looking back over a long and eventful life, the boundaries between memories and dreams, facts and fiction blurred by coloured clouds and a nostalgic soundtrack. This action-packed 12-minute fantasy will be shown 5 times each evening, on the half hour starting at 7pm.

Showtime: 7pm; 7:30pm; 8pm; 8:30pm; 9pm

(10–25 September; free admission; Parade Ground)

Principal Sponsor: CLP Holdings Limited

Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist

Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist has opened and will run until 27 November 2022, taking over all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries and beyond. Rist’s signature moving image installations—highly immersive, deeply sensual, and remarkably insightful—wrap visitors with a virtual hug of sounds, colours, and moving images. Visitors can walk and sprawl within her mesmerising installations, which prompt meditative introspection along with joy and exhilaration, opening up explorations of the body and the image, of exterior environments and interior mindscapes. This high-profile exhibition offers major works from Pipilotti Rist’s oeuvre along with newly commissioned site-specific works for Tai Kwun, in the galleries, on the Prison Yard and elsewhere in Tai Kwun.  (3 August-27 November; tickets on sale now; JC Contemporary and Tai Kwun site-wide)

Lead Sponsor: Indosuez Wealth Management

Chilled Steps

Music has consoled our hearts during times of isolation. Now, with the chance to return, there is nothing more powerful than sharing melodies together in the same space. Returning to Tai Kwun Laundry Steps upon popular demand, Chilled Steps will once again turn the heritage space into a jamming stage where some of the best musicians in town come together to connect with audiences in a relaxed setting.

Chilled Steps was first held in March 2021 as one of the first live performances after months of venue closure. The month-long concert series became a popular chill-out spot for music lovers in town. With the Laundry Steps revamped with stylish and friendly seating, the series will return in September and November to present weeks of free evening concerts.

The series will feature jazz, world, classical, and pop musicians to give radically new genres of music each day, returning as the finest spot to relax after a long day. Curated by jazz bassist and veteran Justin Siu and the highly sought-after jazz pianist Joyce Cheung, music lovers are promised a wonderful evening filled with musical delights. (7-24 September and 1-13 November; free admission; Laundry Steps)

Remarks: The performance line-up and schedule are subject to change. Please stay tuned to Tai Kwun website for the latest information.

Prison Yard Festival: music from within

After showcasing the distinctive and intimate ambience that the dramatically walled Prison Yard can evoke during Projekt Berlin in 2019, Tai Kwun will introduce a new Prison Yard Festival in November to December 2022. The Prison Yard will be transformed into a striking outdoor concert venue for two weeks to explore how music can provide optimism, healing and comfort through challenging times. The festival’s theme of “music from within” evokes the allure of live music within the high-walled enclosure of the Prison Yard and the deep sincerity of musical communication, which has nourished musicians worldwide despite isolation, quarantine, lockdowns and vast distances. (30 November–11 December; Prison Yard & JC Cube)

Details of the Prison Yard Festival: music from within will be announced in October. Stay tuned!

Gender & Space

Gender & Space adopts a gender lens to re-visit Tai Kwun’s history over its first hundred years from 1841 to 1941. Revealing hidden traces of invisible women and gendered space in a historic place of power and masculinity, a man’s world designed by and for men, the alternative stories we tell fill a gap in its history.

Outside of Tai Kwun, what were women’s experiences in the private and public spaces of old Hong Kong? How did spatial-gender segregation overlap with class and racial/ethnic divide to reinforce status distinction? This exhibition further explores different women’s identities and roles in a patriarchal society that combines the old and the new with rapid economic development. It offers a diverse picture of gender and power relations in the construction of gendered space. (5 November–15 January; free admission; Block 01 Duplex Studio)

Details of Gender & Space will be announced in November. Stay tuned!

Breathing with Trees

Throughout all the world’s cultures, trees have always had an intimate connection with us physically, biologically, and emotionally. Apart from providing us with food, shelter, and clean air, trees are silent witnesses to our transient existence, as they remain rooted in one place throughout their lives. However, trees are as mortal as human beings. They constantly face existential threats arising from the damages inflicted on the environment by mankind’s insatiable appetite for consumption and thoughtless expansion.

This exhibition acknowledges the vital role that trees play in our daily lives and explores some of the most advanced ways of protecting, preserving, and nurturing them to ensure future generations can continue to enjoy the benefits that trees bring to us. (8 July–12 September; free admission; Block 01 Duplex Studio)

Visitor information

The entire site of Tai Kwun is open to the public daily from 8am to 11pm.Tai Kwun’s social distancing measures comply with the latest safety regulations. All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must provide either a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass directive. Exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun are subject to active checking of Vaccine Passes. Cleaning frequency is being stepped up for high contact surfaces throughout the day, and hand sanitiser stations are available throughout Tai Kwun. Visit the Tai Kwun website for more details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visit/visiting_tai_kwun.

Programme details are subject to change, so please refer to the Tai Kwun website for news and updates.

Tai Kwun celebrates 10 million visitors. Brimming with excitement, the compound rejoices in the vibrant outdoor space that fosters inspiration in service of our communities

Tai Kwun is pleased to announce that it has welcomed more than 10 million visitors since its opening in 2018. Since then, Tai Kwun has hosted spectacular and insightful exhibitions, programmes and performances, bringing a sense of wonder and delight to Hong Kong and international audiences, by introducing accessible heritage, art and cultural experiences into the daily lives of Hong Kong people. At Tai Kwun, each visit evokes a transformative moment, with new wonders and extraordinary memories to be made.

Celebrating this milestone with visitors, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Chief Executive Officer Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges said, “we are delighted to have welcomed over 10 million visitors to Tai Kwun, one of Hong Kong’s most significant heritage conservation and revitalisation projects, founded and funded by HKJC. We strive to make every aspect of the Tai Kwun experience as welcoming and meaningful as possible, enriching lives through art, culture and heritage and enabling a culturally vibrant Hong Kong. We look forward to welcoming visitors to enjoy the unique Tai Kwun experience in the heart of Hong Kong for many years to come.”

Transformative experiences in the heart of Central

Since its opening, Tai Kwun has delighted visitors with over 2,800 public programmes, spanning from exhibitions to performances, talks and workshops. Various members of the local and international community have been moved by both the centre’s large and small-scale programmes. Be it families, children, couples, individuals, or art lovers, everyone who has stepped foot in Tai Kwun has been enchanted by its transforming experiences and unique activations.

Guiltless gifts to give away

As a token of appreciation, a limited edition postcard in collaboration with Ciaolink will be given away on 3 September to Tai Kwun visitors. This hot stamped postcard features one of the compound’s most recognisable historic buildings—Block 01 Police Headquarters Block. Limited stock only, while supplies last.

A summer of soirees

Now, in the midst of summer, Tai Kwun is brimming with excitement as the compound rolls out diverse opportunities for everyone to delight their senses. Visitors of all ages are invited to spend the remaining weeks of their summers at Tai Kwun, revelling in the season's vibrancy as Tai Kwun offers engaging and immersive programmes.

Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist

A major new exhibition by the internationally renowned Swiss media artist Pipilotti Rist has landed in Hong Kong for Summer 2022. Rist’s signature moving image installations—highly immersive, deeply sensual, and remarkably insightful—wrap visitors with a virtual hug of sounds, colours, and moving images.

InnerGlow
This autumn, a new signature event designed for the whole family will light up the Parade Ground every evening during a 3-week season beginning this Mid-autumn Festival and to late September. InnerGlow uses the latest digital and 3D mapping technology to project breathtaking animations and images onto the facades of our historic buildings on a massive scale.

Over 4 years into our opening, Tai Kwun remains a place where curiosity is stimulated, creativity is always inspired, and talent is empowered by delivering authentic cultural and heritage experiences. The summer season inside the centre is pulsating with joy, as visitors are invited to feel their heartbeat like never before and relish in divine moments of artistry. Tai Kwun remains committed to excellence, as it aspires to present innovative, insightful, and delightful activities that will promote the community’s enjoyment and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history.

With over 10 million breathtaking moments already recorded in Tai Kwun history, the historic grounds can't wait to stay on the pulse of Hong Kong for many years to come.

Visitor information

All visitors will be required to use the "LeaveHomeSafe" App upon entering Tai Kwun and must either provide a COVID-19 vaccination record or the relevant exemption certificate for inspection upon request in accordance with the Vaccine Pass Direction. Exhibition and event spaces in Tai Kwun are subject to active checking of Vaccine Pass. Visitors are encouraged to plan their visits with the newly launched Visitor Planner via https://www.taikwun.hk/en/visitor_planner prior to visiting.

Programme details are subject to change; please refer to the Tai Kwun websites for news and updates. 

Tai Kwun Contemporary today opens the large-scale exhibition Behind Your Eyelid­—Pipilotti Rist, offering visitors a deep dive into the fantastical and humorous world of the internationally renowned media artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962, Switzerland). Immersive, sensual, and insightful, the works of Rist embrace viewers with colours, sounds, and moving images. As visitors walk around and lie down in her mesmerising installations of “organised light”, they will take pleasure in how she makes the familiar unfamiliar while pointing out beauty in unexpected places. The exhibition will run from 3 August to 27 November 2022.

As Rist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Behind Your Eyelid­—Pipilotti Rist comprises more than 45 of her iconic works from the past thirty years—including early single-channel videos with their tongue-in-cheek humour, large-scale moving-image installations brimming with colour and music, sculptural works that merge video and everyday objects—this exhibition goes far beyond a survey of the artist’s oeuvre. Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist offers new site-specific works that will pass through the glass windows of JC Contemporary and caress the historic Tai Kwun site with gentle colours, creating a large, immersive video sculpture on the Prison Yard, animating the D Hall prison cells, and projecting a giant mural on the Parade Ground. Pipilotti Rist’s first exhibition in Hong Kong will allow visitors to experience the artist’s signature “virtual hug” of sounds, colours, and moving images that has so charmed audiences of all ages around the world, from New York (New Museum; Museum of Modern Art) to Kyoto (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto), Los Angeles (Museum of Contemporary Art) to Sydney (Museum of Contemporary Art).

Rist’s oeuvre has long explored the possibilities of video in offering alternative visions of reality and utopia, of humans in nature, and of the relationship between the body (especially the female body) and the digital. Her works allow us to see in different ways—sweeping views, close-ups, even inside the body—while giving us a better understanding of how the aesthetics of the camera work with our whole physical being. Drawn to connections between the exterior and the interior, the artist is particularly fascinated by the intermediaries and interfaces that link the two: the camera lens, skin, and membranes of the eye. While such interfaces certainly offer indexicality for the recorded or registered image, they also blur, contort, and reshape it, which in turn opens up a creative space of speculation, reverie, and play. It is this liminal, ambivalent state that has inspired the title of the exhibition, “Behind Your Eyelid”, and which invites viewers to dive into the realm of moving images for new ways of experiencing the world. In doing so, viewers will be able to glimpse new visions with regards to personal expression, the politics of the body, and the vibrant colours of life and nature. At once comforting and humorous, yet served up with an edge, Rist’s mesmerising installations prompt joy and meditative introspection, experiences that are best when shared.

“We are privileged, after the very successful summer exhibition with Takashi Murakami, to showcase another spectacular large-scale exhibition by such an iconic artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary, not only presenting some of Pipilotti Rist’s history-making installations but also many new productions,” said Tobias Berger, curator of Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist.

“An exhibition of the scale, complexity, and vision of Behind Your Eyelid is a major commitment for any contemporary art institution and has been in preparation for more than three years,” added Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts. “As with all of Tai Kwun’s programming in arts and heritage, this signature event would not have been possible without the unwavering support of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, who provides the core funding of the exhibition, for which we are immensely grateful. We are also very pleased to welcome our newest corporate patron Indosuez Wealth Management, whose support as Lead Sponsor of Behind Your Eyelid enhances our ability to realise the full scope and ambition of this intriguing, joyous, and uplifting summer show.”

Signature Artworks

幻彩巨膜 (Big Skin)

Newly created for this exhibition, Big Skin presents a sensorial environment that draws real footage and 3-D animation and fragments them in real space. “You walk through or under the work, and see some bits and pieces of skin hoisted up in the air and then dissolving,” the artist explains. Of particular note is the special new material of these semi-translucent “skins”: sanded on one side, the material catches video projections in mid-air, in shapes that break beyond the horizontal and the vertical—creating an experience of images “floating” in space.

水虎彩膏 (Water Tiger Colour Balm)

This new site-specific work on Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard presents circular projections from dusk to late in the evening. Given the historic context, one might imagine a certain surveillance of the yard. However, for the artist, the work really constitutes an “electronic bonfire”, caressing visitors and passers-by; by interrupting one’s evening routine and offering a different way of seeing and looking, visitors will be prompted to pause and contemplate their surroundings in a new way. For the artist, the slowly moving lights will take us out of our bubbles and bring us together—and in a way, transforming the Prison Yard into a glade in the city.

像素森林 香港中環奧卑利街大館3樓 (Pixel Forest 3rd Floor Tai Kwun Old Bailey Road Central HK)

A “Pixel Forest” of 3000 hand-sculpted LED lights suspended from the ceiling welcomes visitors to the exhibition. Wandering through the installation, viewers might imagine being inside an exploding screen of pixels, or submerged in a marine forest among bubbles of light trapped in sea grass. Examined closely, each light is revealed to be handmade and distinct, like corals or crystals—or “frozen labias,” smiles Pipilotti Rist, making a serious point about female visual representation. At a slight distance, the larger moving picture appears: colourful waves and patterns flicker and shift in precise sequences, as though the viewer is on a magical journey inside a video.

Sip My Ocean

Sip My Ocean invites immersion in a watery world, this time a dreamy, underwater wonderland ruled by primal forces. There is the push and pull of waves in the Red Sea, saturated with colours and sunlight, as toy objects and bodies float and fall. There are occasional glimpses of a man, but there is mainly the artist in a bikini.

Shimmering with joy, Sip My Ocean reflects the artist’s state of mind while shooting the video: “I found the corals so full of humour that I burst out laughing. I was bursting with ideas—about evolution, about everything.” Yet is there trouble in paradise? First singing and then screaming Chris Isaak’s seductive ballad “Wicked Game” (No, I don't wanna fall in love…), the artist could be alluding to loss and heartbreak—and perhaps even to the bleached corals she found upon her return years later: This world is only gonna break your heart…In this sense, her screaming might even be re-imagined as a call to action in fighting for sustainability.

Ever Is Over All

Brimming with a carefree sense of anarchy, Ever Is Over All shows a woman striding down the pavement in red shoes, holding a large flower in her hand. She sashays merrily along—then nonchalantly takes a sudden swing with the flower, smashing the window of a parked car. She strides on, and shatters the window of the next car, and the next. At one point a policewoman who smiles and nods passes her. For the artist, a magical, utopian dimension opens up, where rules are inverted and flowers mightier than cars, where it becomes possible to glimpse the “criminal power of beauty”. As with Sip My Ocean, the influence of both video art and music videos is clear. But as the artist observes, “Music videos are made to sell records, whereas I’m freed from doing that.” Considering her power to unleash the aesthetic promise of music videos, it is perhaps no surprise that this work possibly later inspired Beyoncé’s mischievous rampage in her 2016 music video “Hold Up”.

靈魂之光 (Soul Lights)

The moment you arrive at 2/F floor of the gallery, you notice the natural light, filtered by the tinted windows of the entire glass façade. The atmosphere is joyous, certainly, but pay attention to the subtle effects: Your sense of space has likely changed. Colours have taken on a different, possibly disorientating tone. As the light shifts from early morning to afternoon to evening, you will sense the mood shifting, too. The artist notes: “Colour is underestimated, colour is borderless, it’s dangerous, it’s emotional, like music.” As something both sensed and measurable, the colours we perceive balance meaning and chaos. Be sure to look for one of Pipilotti Rist’s major works, Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless In The Bath Of Lava), inserted into the floor.

The Apartment

Taking up the entire room, The Apartment recreates a shared living space where moving images dance with objects—putting the “living” back into the “living room,” the artist quips. Like Das Zimmer, the spaces in art institutions are envisioned as shared spaces. Visitors can take a seat at the dining table, lie on the bed, or immerse themselves in the videos. The assortment of items has been plucked from different places, periods of time, and social backgrounds: “It’s like a collective apartment, it’s a global mix,” says the artist, “with the same criteria I have in my work: having some love for any object.” For this exhibition in Hong Kong, she has added a scholar’s rock to the mix: “The stone has to have some intrinsic quality, it has to be a beautiful piece in itself,” she says. “I have learnt that it becomes a helper in contemplation and focus, seeing and imagining a world in miniature, a landscape in miniature.”

Sleeping Pollen

Much of Pipilotti Rist’s artistic practice experiments with breaking video out of the frame into a physical space, and Sleeping Pollen continues this, with a twist. The mirrored spheres with the projected images of herbs and flora invite you to join in the work, conjuring the orbs as “dreams spinning slowly in the air”. With the work situated in the historic prison cells of D Hall in Tai Kwun, the artist imagines the isolated prisoners and loneliness they may face.

Gnadenschaf & Clever Yuji (Sheep of Mercy & Smart Yuji)

Expanding on Tai Kwun’s seasonal wall art project 55 Squared, the Swiss media artist Pipilotti Rist presents two evocative works on the Parade Ground. On the left is a still called Sheep of Mercy, fantastically depicting a flock of sheep superimposed onto the middle of the stamen of a tulip blossom. In the artist’s culture, “sheep” contains a complex set of symbolic connotations: “innocence”, “sacrifice”, as well as “blind obedience”.

Extending from the tulip to the right side is the photographic work Clever Yuji, which portrays the endless creativity and poetry innate in children. The child is calling his mother who in turn captures his escape inside the tulip—to a wondrous world of possibilities in the subconscious and imagination.

Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will also host a wide range of public programming and educational events. These include Tai Kwun Conversations with Pipilotti Rist (in person at Tai Kwun); a Pipilotti Rist’s Choice evening, featuring the artist’s favourite films/videos; pixel mapping and lighting workshops; Teacher’s Morning and Teacher’s Workshop; curator’s tours and other guided public tours. Of particular interest to families with children will be the Kids’ Opening and the Family Day events held throughout the run of the exhibition, while Pipilotti Rist After Hours will offer an exclusive learning experience involving special guest interpreters.  The Artists’ Book Library’s curated display—with books by Pipilotti Rist as well as selections from the artist’s own collection—also allows visitors to consider how Rist’s irreverent, playful, and performative sensibility also resonates as art in print. (See appendix)

A special kiosk will also open in the JC Contemporary gallery reception area, where visitors can enjoy artist editions and merchandise. In addition to items such as masks, posters, and prints, Pipilotti Rist will also offer exhibition-related merchandise in the form of capsule toys, which will include pins, badges, sticky tape, glass cleaning cloths, and more!

Tickets to the exhibition is available on Klook (https://www.klook.com/activity/74469). HK$88 for general tickets and HK$65 for concession tickets (Full-time students with ID, people with disabilities, and senior citizens over the age of 60).

Tickets will also be available at the JC Contemporary reception: HK$95 (general) and HK$75 (concession).

Family tickets are also available: HK$280 for 2 adult tickets and 2 concession tickets.

For more details about the exhibition, various activities, and ticketing information, visit: www.taikwun.hk/pipilotti

Lead Sponsor: Indosuez Wealth Management

Behind Your Eyelid—Pipilotti Rist

Curator: Tobias Berger

3 August – 27 November 2022

Tuesday – Thursday   10 am – 8 pm

Friday – Saturday   11 am – 9 pm

Sunday 10 am – 8 pm

(Closed on Mondays)         

On site: HK$95 (Adults) | HK$75 (Concession)

Online: HK$88 (Adults) | HK$65 (Concession)

About Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist, a pioneer of spatial video art, was born in 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland, located in the Rhine Valley on the Austrian border, and has been a central figure within the international art scene since the mid-1980s. From her earliest video works to more recent large-scale moving-image installations, Pipilotti Rist’s highly immersive, deeply sensual, and remarkably insightful works wrap visitors in a virtual hug of sounds, colours, and moving images. Her mesmerising installations prompt meditative introspection along with joy and exhilaration, opening up explorations of the body and the image, of exterior environments and interior mindscapes.

Since 1984, Rist has displayed her work in an extensive array of solo and group exhibitions. Major solo exhibitions include Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor at The Geffen Contemporary, MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021 – 2022); Your Eye Is My Island at MoMAK, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and ART TOWER MITO (2021); Åbn min Lysning. Open my Glade at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2019); Sip My Ocean at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017 – 2018); Pixel Forest at New Museum, New York (2016 – 2017); and Your Saliva is My Diving Suit of the Ocean of Pain at Kunsthaus Zürich (2016). Rist has also participated in numerous biennales, including the Venice Biennale (1997, 1999, 2011), Biennale of Sydney (2000, 2008, 2014), and the Istanbul Biennale (1997, 2000, 2007).