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Aaina Bhargava
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Born in Hong Kong but raised in the US, artist Christopher K. Ho returns often to the themes of identity and belonging in his work.
![Handout image shows still from Wong Ping's Jungle of Desire, 2015, single channel animation, Image courtesy the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery.tif. 10AUG20 [10AUGUST2020 FEATURES ARTS] CREDIT: Courtesy Wong Ping / Edouard Malingue Gallery](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/540x360/public/d8/images/methode/2020/08/12/c1bcd410-dafd-11ea-b1d3-42d340dc91a3_image_hires_150351.jpg?itok=d-9rUqZm&v=1597215848)
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.
Even before the National Security Law saw books swiped from school shelves ‘for review’, local history, rich as it is, was never mentioned in classrooms.
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.
A fake cactus made from a blowfish, groups of plants that stand for other people at parties – there’s a lot to Trevor Yeung’s artwork, if you care to look closely enough.
Samson Young is one of seven contemporary artists whose fabric-based creations are aimed at sparking debate through an exhibition at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textiles.
Exhibitions of photography from ‘Queen of the Leica’ Ilse Bing and artist Marc Progin, free films online, art, and a live-streamed piano recital – there’s much to see and hear in 2020 edition of Hong Kong French arts festival.
![Handout image shows artwork by Pete Jiadong Qiang (2019). HyperBody Physical Level 2 (Orange): Hyper-sexual Body: Androcur with 6 Cannibalistic Pink Yogurts by Sense Health Management Studio, Photograph by Burning Bear, Chongqing. [30MAY2020 FEATURES ARTS] Credit: Courtesy Pete Jiadong Qiang](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/540x360/public/d8/images/methode/2020/05/29/693d39d2-a0ca-11ea-8055-0ae12e466049_image_hires_173952.jpeg?itok=-4YKHDWL&v=1590745205)
X Museum in Beijing was founded by two 20-something millennials who want to change how Chinese contemporary art is understood and presented, focusing on emerging artists such as Miao Ying, Cui Jie, and Jes Fan.
![Manvi Gagroo as Sidhi in season 2 of Four More Shots Please. Photo: Handout [FEATURES 2020]](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/540x360/public/d8/images/methode/2020/05/28/27f11574-9f0e-11ea-8055-0ae12e466049_image_hires_174234.JPG?itok=8eTbzGnV&v=1590658968)
Four More Shots Please! seeks to show the modern urban Indian female experience and is Amazon Prime Video’s most watched TV show in the country this year, though its creator says Sex and the City comparisons are slightly off.
Part art fair, part exhibition, ‘Unscheduled’ at the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts will showcase the diversity and solidarity of Hong Kong’s commercial and independent art scenes, with hopes to kick-start things after Covid-19.
Hong Kong artist Mak Ying-tung called a man out of the blue, asked him for a date, then filmed it for her latest video art series. ‘My aim is not to educate ... I think more about entertaining’, she says.
Three falling figures are one artist’s comment on recent street protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere; others turn their gaze on the Asia Society’s Hong Kong premises in Admiralty.
