BOOK DISPLAY

Hong Kong Art: 5460 Days

中文版本

In the past 15 years/5460 days since Hong Kong’s handover from British to Chinese sovereignty, there has been a growing tendency for Hong Kong artists to actively engage with society. Taking the form of exhibition, community art project, or collective social action, such art practices represent a turn to local, everyday grass-roots culture that is in constant negotiation with institutional power. 

This cultural and political awakening has been developing since the 1990s. In face of the end of the colonial era and the beginning of an uncertain future under Mainland’s rule, Hong Kong people were confronted with the question of ‘who are we?’, which resulted in an unprecedented interest in local history and a search for Hong Kong’s own cultural identity.

Within the context of the acute socio-political conditions in recent years, Hong Kong artists have been responding to various agendas – from the urgency to preserve the city’s cultural heritage in view of rapid urban redevelopment to issues of human rights and democracy. With a strong local sense of belonging, they have been acting as agents for social change, offering through their art possible imaginations of a better society.

On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the handover, AAA displays a range of material dating from the mid-1990s until today, to showcase the emerging force of the local art scene that has been striving to define the territory’s own past, present, and future.