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Ashlyn Chak

“The world is in a brilliant place right now,” Rattanamol Singh says sarcastically.
“We live in deeply imperfect times,” he continues, more sombrely, “but what happens is that, underneath the surface, people from various disciplines are creating and talking to each other and finding ways to tell their stories through different mediums.”
The search for such people took the Los Angeles-based filmmaker to Hong Kong recently, where he filmed a 40-minute “visual essay”.
It will become the first episode of a documentary series called Patterns and Contrasts, which will be released on YouTube in early June.


For Singh, who is of Punjabi-Sikh descent and grew up in the United States, the changes Hong Kong has seen in recent years – which have included the 2019 anti-government protests and the introduction of the national security law (NSL) in 2020 – are of particular interest.
Singh says that, while Patterns and Contrasts is not exclusively focused on such issues, it examines the special role artists and other creatives have to play when so much of the world is “in flux”.
Hong Kong is “an inflection point” for global phenomena because of its connectedness to other regions and its status as a financial hub, Singh says.
“It’s the perfect first episode because Hong Kong is a microcosm of so much going on worldwide. It was also a place I really wanted to explore very early on. I’d always had this idea of Hong Kong – almost like a mystical thing,” he says.
Singh’s first visit to Hong Kong was in 2002 during a childhood trip around Asia with his father. Although he was too young to remember much, the city made an impression on him.
Artistic freedom is a challenge in so many places. It’s a pattern we share for different political reasons
Rattanamol Singh
He has since returned a few times, including in late November 2024, when he and a small film crew interviewed more than 10 Hong Kong-based artists and art gallery staff at a handful of locations – including large art institutions, smaller galleries and art spaces, and Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui – over eight days.
“Instead of the stories that the world has been told about a place, can we remove as many biases as possible and ask people about the cultural transformation through their lived experiences?” Singh asks.
He “ended up talking to many different types of people”, he says. They included artists Ivy Chan, Mak2, Mark Chung, Reo Ma and Stephane Lam; Rossi & Rossi gallery director Charles Fong; Eunice Tsang, founder of independent art space Current Plans; Mizuki Takahashi, executive director of the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Chat); Ying Kwok, senior curator at heritage arts venue Tai Kwun; gallerist Pascal de Sarthe; and art blogger Yulia Yarkova.

According to Singh, they all said the same thing: people need to talk to each other.
Singh travelled to Hong Kong again in March 2025, during Art Basel, and was impressed with how the city’s art scene came together.
“I think that was my favourite part of Hong Kong,” he says. “Artists and people in different disciplines are talking to each other and meeting in the middle of a Venn diagram. When that happens, you have an ignition point and a chance of stuff mushrooming outwards.
“When I think of places that have been able to make the most disproportionate changes, it’s often a small group of people in constant contact with each other, who can communicate the grievances around them, what they think of the world and how they try to navigate it,” he says.
From his interviews, Singh says he noticed an opposition to consumerism and certain other social ideas, and that many in Hong Kong’s art scene placed emphasis on space – which is no surprise given the city’s relative lack of it.

However, his most surprising finding was the plentiful use of humour among those in the art scene as a tool of expression.
Singh also noticed the use of “a lot of nuance when people talked about their grievances”.
“What can you say? What can’t you say? How do you say things in place of what you actually want to say?” he asks.
Singh found similar sentiments in Stuttgart, where he shot the series’ second episode – about the German city’s music scene and how young immigrants cope with the rise of far-right political ideology there. That episode is set to come out in late June.
“Artistic freedom is a challenge in so many places. It’s a pattern we share for different political reasons,” Singh says. “I felt that going back and forth between the US and Hong Kong lately.

“Creators and writers are in conversation with each other: ‘Hey, all this s*** is happening, what do we do?’ Even in the US, people are navigating how far they can push. That’s the next part, what you do about it.”
Singh calls Hong Kong “a resilient place [no stranger to] shifting geopolitical realities”, and says his interviews there were funny and spontaneous. This led him to name his first episode “A Love Letter to Curiosity”.
“That’s the idealistic hope behind Patterns and Contrasts,” he says. “Hong Kong has been the coolest teacher in that respect.”
One of his fondest memories of filming in Hong Kong is of walking through the city’s Sham Shui Po neighbourhood with Go Hung, a sculptor who makes artworks from materials he finds on the street.

“It was fascinating to see another side to this intensely wealthy city, one of the giant financial centres of the world,” Singh says.
“There’s so much money in Hong Kong, especially in the art world. We saw that during Art Basel. But then there’s the other side of it – a young community of artists who know each other and are growing and creating.
“There’s a really interesting sense of identity that people coalesce around as they grapple with challenges. It becomes almost like a shelter or safe space. One would hope that art and creativity can be magnified in those times as vehicles to articulate things,” he says.


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American filmmaker Rattanamol Singh. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

Rattanamol Singh in a still from episode 1  of his YouTube series about artistic freedom, Patterns and Contrasts, which was shot in Hong Kong. Singh calls the city “a microcosm of so much going on worldwide”. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

Singh and Eunice Tsang, who runs independent Hong Kong art space Current Plans, in a still from Patterns and Contrasts episode 1. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

Singh’s “video essay” on Hong Kong is one of a series of films planned about artists in cities around the world. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

Singh during a shoot for Patterns and Contrasts. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

Singh sits outside a coffee shop in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po neighbourhood while filming Patterns and Contrasts. Photo: Rattanamol Singh

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Arts

Rattanamol Singh was struck by the humour of Hong Kong artists, Art Basel’s show of wealth and how city’s creative community comes together


Rattanamol Singh was struck by the humour of Hong Kong artists, Art Basel’s show of wealth and how city’s creative community comes together.


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