MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III

MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III

MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III

Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary

Myth Makers After Hours

Art After Hours: Myth Makers—Performances by Bones Tan Jones and Joshua Serafin

Tai Kwun Conversations: Spill the Tea and Werq! Truth & Performance in Hong Kong Drag Culture

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III: Teacher's Morning & Teacher’s Workshop

Tai Kwun Conversations: Exhibition(ism) and Social Change

Date & Time

24 Dec 2022 - 10 Apr 2023 Tue–Sun | 11am–7pm

Location

1/F, 3/F Galleries (JC Contemporary)
F Hall

Price

Free of charge

General

Artists: Bunny Cadag, Oscar Chan Yik Long, Shu Lea Cheang, Christopher Cheung, Isaac Chong Wai, Club Ate (Justin Shoulder & Bhenji Ra), Roy Dib, Jes Fan, Chitra Ganesh, Sadao Hasegawa, Fan Chon Hoo, Hosoe Eikoh, Hou Chun-Ming, Yuen Hsieh, Andrew Thomas Huang, Bones Tan Jones, Siren Eun Young Jung, Bhupen Khakhar, Jiaming Liao, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Zihan Loo, Ly Tran Quynh Giang, Zoë Marden & Sonia Wong Yuk Ying, Josef Ng, Patrick Ng Kah Onn, Alfonso Ossorio, Beatrix Pang, Ellen Pau, Sornchai Phongsa, Khairullah Rahim, Ren Hang, Anne Samat, Joshua Serafin, Tejal Shah, Shang Liang, Raqib Shaw, Sin Wai Kin, Sputniko!, Ho Tam, Hiram To, Kwong Chi Tseng, Virtue Village, Danh Vō, Wang Shui, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ka Ying Wong, Martin Wong, Wu Jiaru, Xiyadie, Maru Yacco, Yau Ching, Trevor Yeung, Alex Yiu & Kei Ying Wong, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Samson Young, Zheng Bo, Bruno Zhu 

Curators: Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong

Co-presenter:

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III circles around the core notion of “queer mythologies” and delves into modern and contemporary mythologies along with practices of the body, by gathering a diverse range of artistic idioms related to LGBTQ+ perspectives from over 60 artists from Asia and its diasporas.

The exhibition draws inspiration from artists addressing “queer mythologies”, who highlight either same-sex love and desire or gender fluidity as found in ancient belief systems and traditions in Asia. At the same time, the exhibition also highlights the “new traditions” of our times, of spectacle and celebrity, playful and/or transgressive, along with non-normative bodily practices and histories in artworks by contemporary artists. 

Myth Makers unfolds through three distinctive chapters and encompasses newly produced artworks, historical works from the 1950s–1990s, as well as artworks on loan from the collection of the Sunpride Foundation. In bringing together such a plethora of artistic perspectives and vocabularies, Myth Makers endeavours to present a multiplicity of conversations, representations, and anti-representations of stories, individuals and communities. While the bulk of the exhibition focuses on living artists, some visionary and transformative figures of the past will also be underscored, including artists who lived in times when present-day LGBTQ+ identifications were not possible.

Curated by Inti Guerrero and Chantal Wong, and co-presented with Sunpride Foundation, Myth Makers includes over 100 artworks in all Tai Kwun Contemporary galleries, with one third of the works loaned from Sunpride’s collection. As such, Myth Makers is one of the first major institutional exhibitions on LGBTQ+ perspectives in Hong Kong, and expands on the Spectrosynthesis series from Taipei, Bangkok, and now Hong Kong. The exhibition also includes a special publication collaboration with Queer Reads Library.


Sunpride Foundation
Inti Guerrero
Chantal Wong

Sunpride Foundation was launched in 2014 with the mission to embrace and promote the rich, creative history of the LGBTQ community. The Foundation aims to foster a stronger, healthier, and more equitable world for LGBTQ people and their allies and to encourage and inspire a generation of young artists to take action and create positive changes to the LGBTQ+ experience by exhibiting and preserving art that speaks to society at large. In 2017, Sunpride Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei co-hosted Spectrosynthesis – Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now, the first LGBTQ-themed exhibition staged in an art museum in Asia. Two years later, the Foundation and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre presented Spectrosynthesis II – Exposure of Tolerance: LGBTQ in Southeast Asia, the largest-ever survey of regional contemporary art exploring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer creative history in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Independent curator and art historian, Inti Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He was the artistic Director of bap - bellas artes projects in the Philippines (2018-2022), the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016-2020), curator of the 38th EVA International, Limerick (2018) and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose. He has also curated or co-curated the exhibitions: ‘Institute for Tropical and Galactical Studies’ in Yokohama Triennale 2020, Yokohama Museum of Art; ‘Ming Wong. Your Special Island’ at the CCP Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019); ‘Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs’ (touring at MCAD, Manila, Para Site, Hong Kong, and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016-2017); ‘Udlot-Udlot: on Jose Maceda’ at Asia Art Archive (2016);  ‘Afterwork’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; and ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016-2017); ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Cube, Taipei; Arko Art Center, Seoul; and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco; 2013-2015). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world. Recently, he was named co-Artistic Director of the upcoming 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024).

Chantal Wong is the co-founder of three charities in Hong Kong: Things That Can Happen, an art space set up to connect art to the socio-political context of the city; Learning Together, empowering refugee and asylum seeker youth to take on leadership through access to education, scholarships, and leadership training; and Women’s Festival, a platform promoting gender awareness and equality through public discourse. She is a Ford Global Fellow, a global community working to combat inequality brought together by the Ford Foundation. From 2017 to 2021 she was the founding director of culture at Eaton in Hong Kong, a purpose-driven hospitality brand where she led a culture and programming team to transform the property into a champion for creativity, artistic experimentation and safe-space for intersectional communities, in particular those who have been historically marginalised, and activists. Prior to this she worked with Asia Art Archive, a research centre and archive of modern and contemporary art from Asia as head of strategy helping to build up an invaluable resource for the (re)writing of histories with post-colonial perspectives from the region.


Education and public programmes

Date

Time

Programmes

Saturdays and Sundays from 07.01.2023 – 09.04.2023

Cantonese 3pm | English 4pm

Weekend Guided Tour

10.04.2023 (Mon)

Cantonese 3pm | English 4pm

Weekend Guided Tour

09.12.2023 (Fri)
 

7:00pm – 8:30pm

Tai Kwun Conversations: Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III A Dialogue with Curators


 

05.02.2023 (Sun)

12.02.2023 (Sun)

19.03.2023 (Sun)

26.03.2023 (Sun)

02.04.2023 (Sun)

2 Sessions per day
 

Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary

07.02.2023 (Tue)

7:30pm-9:00pm

Tai Kwun Conversations: Exhibition(ism) and Social Change

11.02.2023 (Sat)

04.03.2023 (Sat)

11.03.2023 (Sat)

01.04.2023 (Sat)

3:00pm–4:30pm

Myth Makers After Hours

12.2.2023 (Sun)
 

1:00pm-5:30pm

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III: Teacher's Morning & Teacher’s Workshop


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