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Aaina Bhargava

Aaina Bhargava

Hong Kong
Reporter, Culture
Aaina Bhargava joined the Post 2019-2020 after working as an Editor for the online art platform CoBo Social. She studied Art History, specialising in contemporary art, and has extensive experience working for a range of art institutions. She has contributed to art/design publications including Design Anthology, Artomity, Asian Art News.

The son of a respected academic, Abbas’ installations are complex and ambiguous in ways that challenge visitors to rethink their relationship to physical space.

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Hong Kong DJ Gia Fu first discovered Latin music in Chinese culture while working for Wong Kar-wai’s production company – since then, she’s played Glastonbury and opened for Marc Anthony.

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Former classmates Samuel Swope and Sarah Lai have found a meeting point for their distinct practices, with a new collaborative exhibition in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

Artists such as Mak Ying-tung 2 and Wu Jiaru are weaving elements of tarot, astrology and feng shui into their works as the role of such concepts moves beyond superstitious hobbies.

The Sars epidemic, China’s nine-dash line in the South China Sea and the ‘fear of now’ – Hong Kong art inspired by the city’s modern history is on show, unusually, at commercial galleries in the city.

Architect David Adjaye has a firm admirer in artist Adam Pendleton, with whom he shares an exhibition opening in Hong Kong in which they ask questions about identity.

In the short film Magic Kingdom, Hong Kong filmmaker Nelson Ng recalls how the promise of a visit to Disneyland was used by Chinese parents in the 1990s as a pretext for what was a one-way trip to begin a new life in America.

Chinese-American mines history of pestilence and of 19th century Chinese labourers in America’s sugar, tobacco, and opium industries – expressed viscerally in her choice of materials such as a charcoal made from burning animal bones, once used to refine sugar cane.

Many younger artists and creatives are moving into retail spaces left empty by the Covid-19 pandemic, giving them the opportunity to work and collaborate on their own terms.

Michael Xufu Huang, 26, is but one of the many young collectors opening their own museums and galleries, in what seems to be a fundamental shift in China’s cultural world.

China and Hong Kong both have small populations of Africans, who often have to deal with racism, from being ignored to being singled out by immigration police or being turned away from restaurants.

A new weekly podcast, HomeGrown, sheds light on the black expat experience in Hong Kong. Its co-creators set it up after they realised there were no resources to guide black expats in the city.

‘It’s an interesting irony,’ says Belgian artist Luc Tuymans of Delftware, cheaply copied in Europe from Ming dynasty porcelain and a feature of his new exhibition in Hong Kong.

Artist Mark Chung questions persisting with Hong Kong’s Symphony of Lights when tourist traffic is at an all-time low in his residence at the de Sarthe Gallery, which explores his personal and political fascination with lights.

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Artist Jes Fan, Brooklyn-based but Hong Kong-raised and widely exhibited internationally, considers modern notions of beauty – and finds it not just in fluid forms but in the grotesque.

Hong Kong artist Wong Ping’s darkly humorous animated videos covering a range of taboo topics and societal issues have put the 36-year-old on a rising international trajectory.

Artists, designers and celebrities from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have contributed designs for an online exhibition and auction to celebrate the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals’ 150th anniversary.

Canadian artist Matthew Wong’s detailed, vividly coloured canvases have become a commercial sensation since his death in 2019. A self-taught painter, he studied photography in Hong Kong and first exhibited his work in the city.

Congolese fashion model Harmony ‘Anne-Marie’ Ilunga is making a push for change in Hong Kong’s prejudiced and often racist fashion industry by setting up her own agency – representing women of colour.

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At Hong Kong art gallery Lévy Gorvy an untitled 1982 canvas by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is the star of a new show – the first in a series there focusing on a single artwork.

Leelee Chan is one of five sculptors collaborating with Hong Kong antiques stores on what they term contemporary relics – art that will define 2020 for people not yet born.

Artist known for her photography and surreal collages recently took up painting, and examples of these mediums feature in her solo show in Hong Kong. Ahead of its opening, she reflected on life in Donald Trump’s America.

Have you ever told a white person that something they said sounded racist? The usually defensive outrage in response is what author Robin DiAngelo has termed ‘white fragility’ and it causes untold damage to people of colour.

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