In 2020, most common people are worried about being infected due to the poor living conditions. Moreover, they must endure a narrow living space at their home. They feel more unsettled, anxious and stressed. These psychological and emotional reactions may also cause distress in later life. Song Dong focuses on people and he takes all kinds of relations in reality to discuss in his works of art. He doesn't try to show the cruel side of life, but tries to find a way to turn frustration into new value in an abstract realism way. We want to bring his interactive artwork for Hong Kong people to provide connection relating to mental health and emotion management.  

In the second half of 2019, a wave of Anti-Extradition Law Movement resulted in long-term social unrest and violence and the new coronavirus that broke out in 2020 has also quickly spread to Hong Kong and even the whole world. Both incidents have seriously affected the mental health of Hong Kong people. Healing is one of Lee Mingwei ’s unique artistic features, which makes his works of art always focus on daily life and explore the core essence of daily events. It is hoped that Lee's exhibition will help people to recover after the turmoil in 2019 and COVID-19 in 2020, rejuvenate and rebuild relationships between people and the city.

Hong Kong is seen as an international metropolis and dreamy heaven for consumerists. Thousands of artificial lights and luxury brand logos overly bright the city while scars and fissures get shaded indeed. Yet, from 2019 to 2020, frequent social protests along with violent actions in the Anti-Extradition Movement broke the apparent peace of the whole city. Under these circumstances, social negative emotions as well as pessimism and extremism thoughts have twisted original HK spirits to some extend. By curating the Jan Vormann residency project in HK, we hope to creatively answer this core question: How does art correlate with social reality in this contemporary context?

On working days, the Filipino helpers need to do a lot of work and almost have no leisure. They rarely take a day off on Sunday, and they can’t afford the high expense of going to the restaurant, so they usually gather at public places like Queen‘s Plaza and Chater Garden in Central. But when passing by them, it makes people think about their identity and existence in HK. Will they be marginalized or ignored in Hong Kong society?  This project is to provide people with the opportunities to embrace, share art and love with the helpers.

Globalization brings advancement and convenience, yet, we are still vulnerable when we face all these issues. Technology could not bring us peace and strength; the power of nature is subdued during the course of cosmopolitanism.  In the time of social movements and coronavirus, Hong Kong city and its people are wounded and surrounded by overwhelmed information, what if Art could spare them a moment to identify what is real, and what do they really need?

He Yunchang, is known as the most challenging performance artist of mainland China. Many of his performances have involved immense pain and hurt to his own body. In Dialog with Water (1999), he attempted to cut a river into two halves with a knife while hanging upside-down from a crane over 90 minutes; In Eyesight Test (2003), he focused his eyes on 256 light bulbs of 10,000 watts for an hour; and most famously, One Meter of Democracy (2010), In this work, 25 participants collectively voted to carry out the artist's proposal of having his own body cut with 1-meter-long opening without anesthetics and stayed to witness its fulfillment.

Ya-chu Kang is a Taipei-based artist who focuses on fiber art especially textile. She graduated from the Fabric Division of the Graduate Institute of Applied Arts, Tainan National University of Arts, where she is now working as a professional artist.

Using mixed-media sculpture, site-specific installation, environmental arts, image- painting, and textile study, her works explore national identity, ethnic culture, global textile history and mythology, urban influence on tradition, the development of knowledge and the economy, secularization and the disappearance of individuality, and environmental issues.

Shi Haopeng is an artist from China who now works and lives in Beijing.

When studying at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Shi Haopeng's major is printmaking. In recent years, he has turned to the present project and installation as mediums of creation. When asked in the interview why this change was made, Shi Haopeng told us that the change of medium is because printmaking can no longer carry his creative appeals, but his works continue the tradition of modern Chinese printmaking, namely, ‘art serves the people’. This tradition was born during the Second World War, at that time, Chinese prints were a kind of propaganda for the liberation, which was strongly critical and public-oriented and what Shi Haopeng intense to do now is to make art intervene in life as well. This is the initial intention to invite him.

Ge Yulu was a student of Central Academy of Fine Arts, he was born in Wu Han. “Lu” in his name actually means road, which had served as a pun in his best-known artwork Ge Yu Road.

In 2012, he found a nameless road in Beijing, then named it with his own name like this, “Ge Yu Road”. The name has accepted by the citizens and can be found in Baidu and Gaode map apps. He exhibited the road sign as his graduation design, he and his artwork then went virus on the internet. The road sign was taken down by the government soon after the expose. Later, more than 3000 nameless road were named because of the Ge Yu Road incident.

Urban Fabric Initiative (UFI) is an NGO supporting artist residency programs (ARP) in Hong Kong SAR. The ARP includes providing financial subsidies to aspiring artists, organizing exhibitions, public events, workshops, and brings connection between International artists to local Hong Kong talents.

Tango Gao is an advertising creative director based in Shanghai, most people know him as an illustration artist through social media. His works are mainly in small-sized comic strips style on any mediums that’s available to him whenever he has an eureka moment. And much like Banksy, he is no stranger to graffiti arts.

Tzu-Tung is a young Taiwanese conceptual artist, a new media artist and also a political activist. Her works are mostly new media arts related to political themes. She surfs with performances, web-art, installations, fictional and experimental films and plays along the borders of contemporary art, academia, and politics. She experiments how art as a method can test and decolonize the contemporary form of art, technology, and authorities.