In conjunction with our Hong Kong report, and this year’s edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, we were delighted to discuss Lund Humphries newest Hot Topics in the Art World offering, Art In Hong Kong; a Portrait of a City in Flux with the author, Enid Tsui herself.
To chart 70+ years of any global hub in such a slim volume is a challenge: Art in Hong Kong is Tsui’s tenacious attempt. She has narrowed her scope by viewing this dynamic city through the lens of contemporary art. In doing so, Tsui describes her desire to ‘record’ her beloved city, but also lay out a vision of Hong Kong that avoids the more usual extreme views. She describes these extremes - either ‘everything is wonderful’ or ‘doom and gloom’, with little in between - as pervasive, even among Hong Kongers themselves. Art in Hong Kong aims to lay the foundations of more nuanced thinking. Contemporary art is enjoying a boom in local interest. Tsui notes that the arrival of Art Basel in 2013 ushered in a time in the city when galleries and museums are busy, and so Art in Hong Kong also follows this rise. As an experienced arts journalist (Tsui is the arts editor for South China Morning Post), Tsui’s writing and expertise are the motivation for her collaboration with Lund Humphries and Hot Topics in the Art World – a journalistic, concise history for a more general reader is the best fit here.
The book is broadly speaking in three parts. The first begins in around 1950, pre-handover, as Hong Kong began to find its feet as a cultural hub for contemporary art on the world stage. From here, we move largely chronologically until the onset of the protests in 2019 and Covid in 2020. The next section is a transition chapter on the M+ Museum (as will be discussed below, this reflects M+’s symbolic place in the cultural landscape of the city), before the final part of the book, focusing on the changes brought about by the combination effects of new security measures (and the protests they inspired), and Covid. What comes through is that Hong Kong is a unique cultural space, reflecting its history and global position as an entrance to either China or the West, depending on your direction of travel, and what that means in real terms for the city. More urgently, this is a demand to judge Hong Kong on its own merits and circumstances. Hong Kong contemporary art is exciting and distinct, deserving of more attention both globally and within China. As Tsui explains, contemporary art in Hong Kong features installation, sculpture and media-based works, heavily contextualised by their origin. What is abundantly clear is that Hong Kong’s dynamic and vital contemporary art scene will only grow in global importance – as a market and creative centre.
In conversation with Tsui, it becomes apparent why M+ is given such importance in the book – it is a reasonable proxy for the state of the cultural scene in Hong Kong. M+ is a large scale, public-funded contemporary art museum, located in the intensely regenerated Kowloon area of Hong Kong, that finally opened its door to the public in 2021. It has an enviable collection of contemporary art, including Hong Kong art, and is comparable to MoMA in its scope and ambition. That M+ has thus far been led by foreigners has been constantly scrutinised, despite the experience they have brought with them of other global hubs. This is especially clear in the Hong Kong exhibitions at the Venice Biennale. While the book did not have room for this, Tsui is able to expand. Prior to M+, Hong Kong took group shows to Venice, with an aim of giving more artists international exposure. When M+ took over curation of the Hong Kong show, the focus changed into something more in keeping with the norms found in Venice of a solo show to really pick up traction and a more focused attention. This ‘worked’ – but M+ will not be curating the 2026 edition and there are swirling rumours it will return to the group show format.
In terms of where we are now, and looking forward after the tumult of 2019-2024, Tsui is optimistic while driving home her desire for a nuanced view of Hong Kong. The proliferation of new contemporary art galleries and spaces has ended, but this is not a doom and gloom story. Those art businesses that have stayed in Hong Kong have ‘dug their heels in’ and are investing heavily in the city; the auction houses are a clear example of this strategy. Hong Kong businesses are also developing to serve this eco system. Tsui also drives home that Hong Kong should be judged on its own merits – maybe it’s not the politically liberal art eco-system that New York or London claim to be, but compared to China, or much of the rest of the world, it holds its own as a welcoming home for artists and the industry in all their diversity. Crucially, as Tsui emphasises in person and in the book, Hong Kong remains the route into China, and China’s conduit of soft power to the West.
Tsui clearly succeeds in her main goals of laying a clear foundation of what is going on in Hong Kong now and how we got there, in a nuanced way. She has succeeded in avoiding extremism in her presentation of Hong Kong and its art scene, except in its most important point: Hong Kong is unique, and will remain so.
