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Kacey Wong (1970- )

Kacey Wong is a Hong Kong based visual artist. He has studied Architecture and arts during his studies in the United States. Upon graduation, he first worked as an architect. Then, he developed in the field of arts. In 2003, he received the Rising Artist Award by the Hong Kong Arts Council and Outstanding Arts Education Award. In 2012, he won the Hong Kong Contemporary Arts Award to recognize his contribution. At present, he is the assistant professor in the school of design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Kacey Wong is keen on exploring different aspect of arts. His works involved various aspects in arts, such as installations, sculptures and performances. In his earlier career, he focused on Space. In his series “Drift City” (2000-2010), he travelled around the world with a skyscraper costumes. This is to express his concern about space to the public. Later, he became aware of Environmentalism. He found out that recycling in Hong Kong was not going well. Thus, he created various artworks, trying to advertise the concept of preserving the environment. In recent years, inspired by Ai Wei Wei “Everything is art. Everything is politics”, he become an activist in politics. He made performances during some major protests in Hong Kong, namely “Brain Washing Machine” (2012) and Hongkongese Warning Squad (2014).

Despite the topics concerned and ways of expression change over time, there is a thing that remains unchanged – his social concern. Most of his works are focused on the people’s livelihood. This may be the reason why he is becoming more famous in our society.

My Research – Kacey Wong

I got to know about the local artist Kacey Wong after I went to the visit “Walking in the Dreams”. His work “Unbroken Passage” encourages people to think about dreams. In the installation, a bike is tied by a number of ropes, meanwhile the projector is looping the footage of a bike travelling in a tunnel at high speed. This is kind of contradictory as a tied bike is not able to travel! I think the artist tries to materialize the feeling of dreaming. For example, we only dream when we are stationary and asleep, yet, deep in our minds, we are doing things that are impossible!

After I looked up on the web, I think most of his works have multiple meanings embedded. Since he is political active in recent years, many of them involved protest elements. His works involved various aspects in arts, such as installations (Unbroken Passage) and performance (Hongkongese Warning Squad).

What’s more, many Hong Kong think art is untouchable, simply because arts relates to topics people don’t care about. Yet, Kacey Wong creates artworks about topics around the society. Take the “Brain Washing Machine” (2012) as an example. In respond to the introduction of Moral and national education, he designed a hat-like object that looked like a washing machine to express his concern about the curriculum. And that is also why I would like to pick him as my research target!

Lately, I’ve decided to research about “Protest Art” in Hong Kong. Protest in Hong Kong is a unique culture which is embraced by the locals. There are at least two major marches every year. In the past, protesters made poster or label only to voice out their concerns. Yet, after the umbrella movement, the style of protesting have become more diverse. Protesters start making sculptures, installations and performances to fight for their desire. Kacey Wong has made a few performances that I may illustrate in my research, too. This makes me wonder: to what extend does art influence protest? I reckon art would have a great impact on it.

And my curiosity motivates me towards the answer.

#protestart #kaceywong

In the meantime, I think the local artist Kacey Wong have also done several art performances that are worthwhile to mention. The performance I would like to talk about is the “Hongkongese Warning Squad” (2014). Kacey Wong made this performance during 1-July Marches in 2014. In the performance, he and his colleagues dressed up and showed warning signs like a police constable. The only difference was the content on the signs. The signs displayed “Redden”, “Corruption” and “Love the Party”, which are against the governance of the Communist Party of China. Obviously, the meaning of this performance is to warn the Hong Kong people about the status quo. People should voice out their concern about the abusive power of the police, as well as white terror happening in our society. I a"|{i庾

Lesson 9: Performing art and Kacey Wong

Besides tangible art creations such as paintings and sculptures, some intangible art performances also take up a key role as well. In this lesson, we have talked about the performing art by discussing the performance by various artists. One of them is Zhang Huan. Initially, I was puzzled by his performances, because most of his performance involved insult or self-torturing. However, once I recognized the meaning, I really appreciate his contribution. For example, in “12 m2”, he sat in a public toilet located in the suburban area in Beijing for an hour with his body spread with honey. This is a self-torturing move by him as honey attracts insects. Yet, self-torturing not only happens in this case. Some workers in the mainland has to wake up very early in the morning to get to work. This, in fact, is a kind of self-torturing. Thus I appreciated him since he expressed his concern to the labor problem in a self-torturing way.

In the Hong Kong branch of Pekin Fine Arts, the “Square” series was featured. The two sculptures share same design language. They are white in color and made of fiberglass. There are Chinese labor in their daily clothing, attached by white doves. Artistically, they have shown outstanding craftsmanship, as the sculptures are well-constructed with fine details. What’s more, there are filled up with meanings as well. “Square” in China widely refers to the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Yet, there is no dove there. Thus, this is, in my opinion, representing freedom, free-thoughts and dream for a better future of the artist.

Then, we visited another gallery nearby namely Pekin Fine Arts. The gallery focused on the work of Zhang Dali, a Chinese Graffiti artist. In the past, he has created many controversial artworks that have stirred up debates in China. For example, in the 1990s, he made a photo series by spray-painting his head near places where would be knock down by the government. Through his work, he voiced out the people’s complaint about the urban redevelopment plan.

Besides the colored dots, I also noticed another characteristic of her work. Physically, the sofa is made of sewn stuffed fabric and plaster. And the sculpture was a white surface filled with high-heels and other objects. From the sofa and the sculpture, we can tell that the artist used some protruding objects to decorate them. The class has diverse opinion what the object are. Some say they are grass; I personally think they are mushrooms; the instructor even thinks they are penis! Anyway, after I have looked it up on the web later on, I found that the phallic objects are actually a symbol for liberation of women. In my opinion, I think this is the artist’s answer to feminism. During 1960s, many countries, especially Japan. Women are not treated equally in the community, through her work, people are encouraged to be open-minded and strive for a balance.

Walking further, there is a number of pattern paintings hanging on the wall. Despite the difference in colors and shape, they all share a similarity – all of them are consist of dots to create different shapes. This shows how great the impact of her illness is to her life.

Luckily, at the time we visited Whitestone Gallery, the gallery was holding an exhibition of a famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Many people recognize her from her pumpkin sculpture, we have a chance to see it right away! To describe the installation, we can see six naked women surrounding a table, which has a lot of utilities on it. Interestingly, the whole installation has a pattern of dots on it. According to the person-in-charge there, the pattern has a special meaning to the artist herself. In fact, Yayoi Kusama, who often introduces herself as an obsessive artist, was suffering from neurological visual and hearing impairments at the age of nine. As a result, the dot patterns are the result of her hallucinations in her childhood.

Lesson 8: Visit to Whitestone Gallery and Pekin Fine Arts

This is the second exhibition visit in this GE course! Today, we are going to visit two galleries at Aberdeen, which is the Whitestone Gallery and Pekin Fine Arts. I think the artworks from both of the galleries are artistic and inspiring as I will illustrate below.

The "EARTH" without "ART" is just "eh"

In class, we were shown the sculptures by Ron Mueck, an Australian hyperrealist sculptor. After searching on web, I can see many of his work have a very detailed appearance, such as human skin and color. Moreover, he often plays with scale in his work to create some appealing images. For example, his sculpture, "Man in a Boat,” (2005), shows his superb skills I in doing human figures. It is made of fiberglass and silicone molds. The sculpture features a giant naked man sitting in a boat hopelessly. At first glance, you may wonder,” Why it is so big?” However, I think this symbolize although he is a giant, he is powerless on determining where he is going. In my opinion, I think this kind of represents the common phenomenon in democratic countries – despite the voice of the people is loud and clear, they have no control of the government.

I looked at the artwork by a well-known Dadaism artist Hannah Hoch. His artwork was named Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919. It is a collage made by pasted newspaper. The pasted characters are mainly some great leaders at that time. They are pasted in a way that they are falling or dying. Also, we can barely see words like “anti”, “Dada” and “die” in his work. Judging from these factors, the artist may want to convey the idea of anti-war and his disagreement with the then-leader, who would rather to fight than to change the people’s livelihood.

Lesson 5-6: Dada and fluxus

We continued our lesson with the introduction of Dada and Fluxus. By definition, Dada was an art movement after the First World War. Most of the artworks in that era featured songs and poetry created in an unorganized way. Yet. They are not completely non-sense and some actually possess meanings or feelings for the events at that time. Many of them included nationalistic values like patriotism and militarism. They look quite intriguing as I may show some of the works later on! From it, intermedia was a frequently-used media to create works. It was used to blur the media boundary by combining different media, such as music and poetry, poetry and painting.

Fluxus, similar to its predecessor, promoted anti-art and simplicity. During the lesson, we saw some artworks and installations which is quite inspiring as well.

Not only do I appreciate the aforementioned artworks, I also enjoyed the masterpieces of the others. To conclude, it was truly an unforgettable experience since it allows one to reflect the importance and meaning of dreams. Thus, I strongly recommend people who wants to know about the meaning of dreams!

The last one I am interested in is called “Unbroken Passage” by Kacey Wong. In the installation, a bike is tied by a number of ropes, meanwhile the projector is looping the footage of a bike travelling in a tunnel at high speed. This is kind of contradictory as a tied bike is not able to travel! I think the artist tries to materialize the feeling of dreaming. For example, we only dream when we are stationary and asleep, yet, deep in our minds, we are doing things that are impossible!

The second one is a video named “Don't Blame the Moon” by Leung Mee-ping in 2010. The video played is about a group of children with different religious backgrounds. They are invited to each other’s’ temples to talk about their dreams and future career. I believe this is a very meaningful piece of work. Different from the others, the “dreams” here are about what they wish to be in the future, rather than the dreams we have at night! On the other hand, as moon represents purity, I reckon the artist is trying to point out that regardless of what’s happened, children shouldn’t be involved. Also, in view of the recent conflict between races, the installation can spread the message of peace so that their dreams may come true one day.

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