In her Hong Kong trilogy, Shih Shu-ching stumbled upon a eurema hecabe, a small butterfly species endemic to Hong Kong. She drew an analogy between this delicate creature and the city itself, suggesting that, like the butterfly, Hong Kong harbors a resilient force capable of challenging its destiny despite its outward fragility. While traditional literary narratives often recount the city's complex history, contemporary art embraces a broad spectrum of perspectives that foreground nonlinearity and indeterminacy.
The virtual exhibition "Metro Via Virtual" delves into Hong Kong's imagery, showcasing artworks that engage with themes of history, myth, religion, capital, gender, and race. These layered portrayals are merged with multimedia innovations, including interactive games, 3D animations, figurative art, 360° videos, and sound art, creating a metropolitan symphony. However, the immersive quality of these media is somewhat diminished by the virtual format's limitations on texture, size, and physical presence.
Artists Andrew Luk, Alexis Mailles, and Peter Nelson reimagined WWII bunkers and tunnels on the Kowloon Peninsula, enabling players to delve into a historical milieu. Vvzela Kook's animation explores the myth of a surviving, AI-dominated underground Kowloon Walled City. Kat Suryna employs pastels to capture the spiritual realms she encountered in Hong Kong, represented through a demonic online avatar that transforms Buddha's visage. Elaine Wong casts the urban landscape across her living room in fragmented 360° panoramas, critiquing the dissection of urban spaces by economic forces and gendered lines. Meanwhile, Riar Rizaldi intertwines the sounds of Victoria Park, where Indonesian domestic workers spend their day off, with the clatter of kitchen utensils, digitally bridging the gap between their public and private lives.
About the curator
Hong ZENG is an academic and curator. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research centres on the dynamics of gender and spatial politics within visual cultural production. Her work critically examines how ideologies operate and the various forms of resistance they generate in creative industries. She has published articles in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Visual Communication, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Continuum, among others, and is currently working on her first monograph Women Artists Reshaping Spatial Politics in Hong Kong. Her curatorial projects bring political, societal, and ecological exigency to the fore via exploring the expressive mechanism of multiple art media. She curated “Non-place” and “That Place” at Lumenvisum (Hong Kong, 2021), Hong Kong in Poor Images at Ely Center of Contemporary Art (United State, 2020) and Blown Away—Art, Science, and Extreme Weather at Tai Kwun—Center for Heritage and Arts (Hong Kong, 2019). She also held the 2020 Yale-China Arts Fellowship and was a visiting scholar at the School of the Arts, Columbia University.