Hong Kong opens top art museum amid fears of “dark age” culture | Art and Culture News

Hong Kong, China – In its cave the reception hall offers a view of the bright view of the Port of Victoria. His collection allows visitors to see some of the most significant works of art in the world.

M +, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is the architect behind the Tate Modern in London, to be presented as the first global museum of visual art in Asia.

It’s been 14 years and the museum, the jewel in the crown of the West Kowloon cultural district in Hong Kong, will open on Friday at a time of political turmoil.

Despite China’s claiming a place on the world culture map and throwing past the predominant trade interests, a dark cloud of censorship in the name of protection. national security seen on the horizon.

“It’s a big development, it’s been going on for a long time. M + is of local, regional and global importance, ”said Paul Gladston, a specialist in contemporary Chinese art at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. That said, “it will have to do with finding ways to negotiate these well-known issues on the mainland. It’s true now.”

In March, when M + executive director Suhanya Raffel said she would step down from controversial work on a media tour, Henry Tang, the head of the West Kowloon district, wasted no time in clarifying that all exhibits would be under the auspices of the National. The Security Act, which China enacted in June last year.

The law criminalizes Beijing for subversion, terrorism, cooperation with foreign forces and secession with life imprisonment, according to critics.decimated‘Democratic freedoms in Hong Kong.

The law “limits what M + can do, and gives a perception that limits what M + can do,” Gladston told Al Jazeera. “That’s problematic.”

During a private visit to the museum last week, Doryun Chong, the chief curator of M +, was asked how his work had changed compared to the one he was appointed to in 2013.

“The earth has changed,” he said, “things have changed a lot. There is a lot of hope and study.”

In the same year, Andy Warhol, the American artist, had his biggest exhibition ever on tour in Asia, and while his Mao serigraphs were banned from Beijing and Shanghai, they were shown in Hong Kong.

This year, just months before the grand opening, the museum released a note that a photo of exiled Chinese artist Ai Weiwei showing a bird flipping in Tiananmen Square in Beijing would not be included in the opening exhibits.

The statement saw the museum’s executive director as a drop in the face of serious attacks by pro-Beijing politicians. A description of the 1997 work, Study of Perspective: Tian’anmen, is available on the museum’s website, but there are no photographs.

That’s not all.

The prominent Beijing critic has many pieces in his M + collection, which is also available online. There are no photos from ‘Study of Perspective: Tian’anmen’, although other episodes of the series have been shown [Al Jazeera]

In recent months, attacks by various state-controlled media outlets (ranging from documentary screenings to newspaper cartoons) have virtually eliminated the freedom of expression that was once valued in Hong Kong.

After being named a “troublemaker” in a pro-Beijing newspaper in August, sharp singer-songwriter Adrian Chow, best known for composing the political Cantopop, resigned a seat on the city’s art development council.

“I am concerned that Hong Kong is leading the dark era,” Chow said, “it is inevitable that it will affect the development of art.”

‘Safe playing’

A few weeks ago the Danish artist Jens Galschiøt was joining forces against the eviction and possible destruction of the Pillar of Shame, which celebrates the 1989 bloodshed of repression. Tiananmen Square.

The sculpture he has been on a university campus the day after Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 after more than a century of British rule, but authorities have recently ordered the removal of the column.

The eight-meter-tall ‘column of shame’ by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot has been in a courtyard at the University of Hong Kong since 1997. It will now be removed. [Tyrone Siu/Reuters]

Now all eyes are on what will go unseen at M +, and officials have stressed that only a small portion of the 6,000-piece collection can be displayed in the 17,000-square-foot (183,000-square-foot) exhibition space at a time.

Uli Sigg, a former Swiss ambassador to China and a private collector of more than 1,500 works of art, is at the heart of the M + collection. It is likely that some pieces from Sigg’s collection, prohibited by security laws, will remain in a seven-story concrete-covered warehouse facing the museum.

Meanwhile, filmmakers in this old East Hollywood are facing more and more control. Under the pretext of COVID-related crowd control rules, officials are deploying as moles to enter and close private performances.

At least three new documentaries about the 2019 pro-democracy movement have been banned from local release.

Film director Kiwi Chow circumvented the ban with his new film Revolution of Our Times by hosting a premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival as a last-minute surprise for the program, and then selling the rights to a European distributor. Anticipating problems with the Hong Kong authorities, Chow destroyed all the raw footage.

However, for artists who need to circulate works locally, self-censorship is becoming a strategy for self-preservation.

Newspaper illustrator Justin Wong has admitted that he is moving away from dangerous content and approaching safer topics, but admits that safe play has also not been enough.

“Of course, if people want to accumulate sin in me, they can make a mountain of Mickey Mouse that I draw,” Wong said.

Asian Field, an installation by British artist Antony Gormley at the new M + Museum, opened on Friday after years of delay. Gormley did the work in 2003 after inviting people from a village in Guangdong to make thousands of clay figurines over a five-day period. [Jerome Favre/EPA]