ReviewIn Art in Hong Kong, Enid Tsui gives brisk account of city’s cultural power and challenges

“Hong Kong is a cultural desert.” How many times have you heard this old chestnut? It’s not true, and as Enid Tsui notes in her illuminating new book Art in Hong Kong, it never has been. The axiom is attributed to Chinese writer Lu Xun, who wrote in the 1920s that “Hong Kong is not a cultural desert”, inadvertently setting off a century of haughty dismissals of the art and culture that have always thrived there. What Hong Kong did lack, for many years, was the infrastructure to support its creative talent. That is no longer the case, as museums, galleries, auction houses and art fairs have proliferated, turning Hong Kong into a pillar of the global art market and a destination for international collectors and curators alike. But Hong Kong is a place in constant flux. The National Security Law passed by Beijing in 2020 has raised concerns about free expression, while China’s latest five-year plan supports Hong Kong becoming an “East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange” and the city government is committed to telling “good stories of China and Hong Kong” through culture. What does that mean for a city whose artistic culture has long straddled the line between freewheeling creativity, the mercantile impulses of a city driven by trade – and now a new political environment? That is one of the questions Tsui tackles in her book, published by Lund Humphries and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art as part of a series on “hot topics in the art world”. She approaches it with the clarity and incisiveness that comes from many years of reporting on the cultural scene; Tsui is the Post’s arts editor. It makes for brisk reading – an accessible introduction to anyone new to Hong Kong art, but also an insightful and finely rendered analysis for those already familiar with it. The book starts by asking a seemingly obvious question: “What is Hong Kong?” The answer, as with everything in this British colony turned Special Administrative Region of China, is complicated. Historically, Hong Kong was a city caught between empires; today it continues to straddle geopolitical and sociocultural fissures, which is as much an asset as it is a hindrance. “ Just as settlers in geologically unstable areas are rewarded by the fertility of the volcanic soil underneath,” writes Tsui, the tensions and contradictions that have always defined Hong Kong are the source of its enigmatic cultural power. Tsui finds a compelling representation of the Hong Kong enigma in Jaffa Lam, through whom she weaves together the many threads of the city’s art scene. Born in Fujian province in southern China before migrating to Hong Kong with her mother and sister, Lam grew up in poverty in a rooftop shack, but won a spot at Hong Kong’s only art school at the time. There she was caught between the influence of émigrés from mainland China who had revolutionised Chinese ink art, an educational establishment shaped by Western pedagogy and an upcoming generation of young local artists who used mixed-media work to examine their place in Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s place in the world. Struggling after finishing her studies, Lam was motivated by the Sars epidemic in 2003 to turn a lens on Hong Kong society, marking the beginning of a career of making thoughtful public art. In this she was supported by an emerging ecosystem of non-profit institutions such as Para Site, founded in 1999, and the Asia Art Archive, founded in 2000, which added to the government-run arts venues established during an era of civic-minded governance in the 1970s and 80s. For all her critical success, however, Lam and many other Hong Kong artists of her ilk were caught between the cracks of the commercial infrastructure that emerged to support a mainland Chinese art boom in the 2010s. This was the decade when Hong Kong found itself becoming a global art hub, thanks largely to its role as a tax-free intermediary between China and the world. Economic rather than cultural motivations drove international galleries to open branches in the city, joining fairs like Art Basel and a growing number of auction houses; the West Kowloon Cultural District was initially proposed as an opportunity for tourism and property development, before public pressure transformed it into something less profit-oriented. But the growth of the Hong Kong art market has helped support the more grass-roots creative life that had been growing for generations. Once again, Lam is an example of this. She nearly burned years of art in 2021, but a Covid-era focus on local art helped spark commercial interest in her career, and she is now riding the wave of growing international attention. This happy turn of events belies some troubling trends in Hong Kong art. Tsui dedicates one of her book’s five chapters to the impact of the national security legislation, post-Covid emigration and Hong Kong’s economic struggles. She is clear-eyed and level-headed in her acknowledgement of the chilling effect new policies have had on creativity in Hong Kong, while also recognising that the city, its artists and art institutions have proved resilient. The cultural desert never existed – and even in the face of drought, Tsui offers guarded optimism that art in Hong Kong continues to blossom. Art in Hong Kong: Portrait of a City in Flux, published by Lund Humphries in association with Sotheby’s Institute of Art

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Post’s arts editor gives incisive, accessible analysis of Hong Kong’s place in the art world, how it got there and the road ahead

Post’s arts editor gives incisive, accessible analysis of Hong Kong’s place in the art world, how it got there and the road ahead