Conversations | Mirror, Mirror: On the Transgressive Art of Cantopop and Performance
Art Basel Hong Kong 2023, March 24
Three contemporary artists at the vanguard of art and performance discuss their work in the context of Cantopop as an expansive spectrum of evolving popular cultures. From the ever-present legacies of Cantonese opera and the quintessential Cantopop era; crowned by the Four Heavenly Kings in the late-20th century, to the popular impact of 21st century Hong Kong boyband Mirror.
‣ Sin Wai Kin, artist, Blindspot Gallery
‣ Ming Wong, artist, Vitamin Creative Space
‣ Rainbow Chan, artist, producer, and vocalist
‣ Moderator: Cusson Cheng, Assistant Curator, Para Site
‣ Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin) is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. Sin uses drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking. Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often-unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.
‣ Ming Wong works with cinema and popular culture to consider how one´s identity is constructed, reproduced, and circulated. Through imperfect translations and re-enactments of classic world cinema in which the artist plays all of the characters, Wong’s videos, photographs, installations, and performances uncover the slippages that haunt ideas of “authenticity” and “originality”.
‣ Chun Yin Rainbow Chan 陳雋然 is a vocalist, music producer and multi-disciplinary artist. Her practice explores diasporic experiences and deeply personal tales of love and loss. Inspired by myths, bootlegs and popular music, Chan plays with the notion of authenticity through mistranslations, digital interventions, and the fragmentation of memory.
‣ Cusson Cheng has been Assistant Curator at Para Site since January 2021 and serves as Art Editor at the Hong Kong-based leading Chinese-language art periodical Art and Piece (美紙). He received his BA with Honours in comparative literature, sociology, and Buddhist studies from the University of Hong Kong.
This talk will be conducted in English, with simultaneous interpretation available in Cantonese and Mandarin.
The Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 Conversations program is curated by Stephanie Bailey.
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