Meet the Hong Kong artists at this year’s Venice Biennale

What gives a city its character? Is it grand, iconic landmarks; famed eateries; international brand names? Or is it something more quotidian: the chatter of locals in an intimate neighbourhood restaurant; the way a main road winds through the urban landscape, rising and falling with the natural topography; the billowing of fresh laundry outside a sky-high tenement window? Real character often hides in plain sight – overlooked, underappreciated, neglected.

For Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui, the two artists selected for Hong Kong’s Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia , truly knowing a city is an embodied experience. It’s the understanding that comes from contemplating how the light reflects off Victoria Harbour at different times of day or feeling the breeze on your face while you sit on the top deck of the tram as it trundles from Kennedy Town to Happy Valley. These vernacular experiences come to the fore in Ng and Hui’s exhibition, which will conjure the magic of everyday life in Hong Kong at one of the most important international art events this May.

We meet the exhibition team in December at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA), which is jointly presenting the Hong Kong Collateral Event in Venice with the Hong Kong Arts Development Council this year. The artists are still in the early stages of preparation, but the vision is clear. At a historic courtyard house just outside Venice’s 12th-century Arsenale, Ng and Hui will create a multisensory installation inspired by everyday encounters and objects in Hong Kong.

“The presentation is titled Fermata, after a musical symbol indicating a prolonged note or pause at the player’s discretion,” says HKMoA director Maria Mok.

“The exhibition invokes a change of pace, inspiring the audience to slow down, be embraced by the work and feel the poetic rhythms of the everyday,” adds Mok. The musical reference also resonates with the title of the 61st Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, conceived by the late artistic director Koyo Kouoh. As she wrote in her curatorial text, “The minor keys ask for listening that calls on the emotions and sustains them in return.”

Ng and Hui are a curious pairing – they’re from different generations and have rather dissimilar aesthetics and practices. Ng, associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts, is an artist known for meditative, site-specific works and participatory projects that explore time and memory. These include a pair of Hong Kong trams converted into mobile camera obscuras and a video installation that simulates the daylight conditions at different sources of water around the world. Hui, who trained under Ng, is an emerging artist who reinterprets traditional Chinese art forms through unexpected material encounters, such as painting classical fish emblems on tissue paper and crafting ceramic drinks cans decorated with ornate patterns.

What connects the two Hongkongers is their sense of care and attention towards their environment and their exaltation of the commonplace. Ng’s point of departure for the forthcoming presentation was the sight of laundry lines.

“Go to any street in Venice and you’ll see spectacular laundry lines flitting across the buildings,” Ng says. “Local residents treat them like artworks, curating the lines of differently coloured clothing. In my mind, this immediately sparked a connection to Hong Kong’s housing estates, where people often hang their laundry on railings; hence the Cantonese saying, ‘Hong Kong buildings have 10,000 flags’”.

Hui, meanwhile, is fascinated by the city’s ubiquitous plastic bags – which you’ll find at any wet market and flower shop or hung in aqueous rows on Kowloon’s “Goldfish Street” – as well as distinctive Hong Kong architectural features, such as tong lau (tenement) windows. “Metaphorically, I want our exhibition to be a window for people in Venice to look at the real Hong Kong,” Hui explains. “Light, shadow, sound, windows and plastic will all be key elements of the installation.” In its final form, their joint presentation will allow visitors to feel the pace and rhythm of Hong Kong, exemplifying the notion of art being a tool of communication and cultural exchange.

“The point isn’t to get people to admire our art; rather, our exhibition is a way to shed light on the art of the everyday,” Ng says. “Maybe after people visit our exhibition, they’ll turn the corner at the Campo della Tana and start noticing things they hadn’t before.”

The Hong Kong Exhibition at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will be held in Venice, Italy from 9 May to 22 November.