The next Tai Kwun Conversations, No Stone Unturned – A Material Journey from Hong Kong to Mexico, explores narratives of rocks and stones with the artist Leelee Chan and the curator Tam Hok-nang Alex. The audience will be taken on a historical journey through the urban materiality of Hong Kong, followed by Leelee Chan’s retelling of her own journey into material cultures across the world.
Materiality is very much a key theme in Tai Kwun Contemporary’s current exhibition, Poetic Heritage, which explores an expanded notion of heritage. In particular, the exhibition addresses the individual agency of artists in how materials are produced, used, disposed and sensed. This notion of materiality—one undercurrent running through the exhibition—views materials not as merely objects of artefacts but rather as part of a dialogical relationship between subjects and objects.
Drawing from the artist's work, this conversation will take a new perspective (or perhaps an immensely old perspective) in examining how rocks have been imbued with historical, cultural and even emotional significance, and how disparate narratives of Hong Kong history have been depicted within a framework of urban materiality.
This will be followed by a focused discussion with Leelee Chan on her artistic experimentations with materials, in particular through her BMW Art Journey Tokens from Time, which traces material cultures from the past, present, and future. As part of the journey, she travelled to Mexico in the summer of 2021 to look at the evolving meaning and value of silver and obsidian. The discussion will probe how her exploration of materials has led to a deeper understanding of the historical contexts, communities, human behaviours, and social relationships, and reveal something about how materials are bound to ecology, how material extraction impacts communities, and how social-economical relationships of the cities and regions that she visited.
Tai Kwun Conversations is a monthly event that brings together brilliant minds from the fields of contemporary art, architecture, heritage, among many others. Join us to discover new artistic exchange and outstanding practices in heritage conservation.
This event will be conducted in Cantonese, with Cantonese to English simultaneous interpretation.
The event will adhere to the latest health and safety regulations and enforce social distancing measures.
