Tai Kwun｜Artist Hu Xiaoyuan's seven new commissioned works - Veering - are intertwined with installation, sound, painting and video.

Description

Tai Kwun Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibition Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering, the acclaimed artist's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Opening 24 January, 2025, the show features twelve new works across seven thematic collections, all commissioned by Tai Kwun. Hu Xiaoyuan (b. 1977 in Harbin, China) was catapulted onto the international stage in 2007 as the first female Chinese artist to participate in the prestigious documenta exhibition in Germany. Over the past two decades, she has established herself as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in contemporary Chinese art and now brings her singular vision to Hong Kong audiences, re-examining her life experiences as a woman through installation, sound, painting, video, and literary creations. In her unique visual narratives, in which natural knowledge, historical records, and literary metaphor are interlaced, the artist mobilises biological remnants and architectural ruins, combining them with metal, stone, and other mediums typically used in traditional plastic arts.

Running from 24 January to 13 April 2025, the exhibition takes place on the first floor of JC Contemporary. As part of Tai Kwun’s Breakthrough series, Veering is presented alongside the solo exhibitions Alicja Kwade: Pretopia and Maeve Brennan: Records, this trio of shows by female artists explores materials and storytelling through diverse, thoughtful approaches. Altogether, these exhibitions reflect Tai Kwun’s commitment to celebrating the current art scene and deepening the public’s understanding of contemporary art.

Veering employs a poetic visual style to probe the relationship between the individual and the group, attempting to show how individuals exist and make choices in a broken and dysfunctional contemporary society. Continuing her signature use of long-overlooked objects, Hu Xiaoyuan focuses on the waste from social and biological systems, such as old steel from urban demolition, used implements from daily life, the dry wings of insects and the remains of marine life. For Hu Xiaoyuan, everything, whether organic or inorganic, from large-scale urban architecture to small- scale everyday ephemera, from herself to everything else on the planet, has a life trajectory. She reconfigures, juxtaposes, and combines these seemingly unrelated materials that no longer function, then investigates their meaning via literature, history, and philosophy. Tai Kwun’s revival, from historical monument to cultural hub, parallels the artist's process of reviving alternative narratives embedded within overlooked things. Resonating with Tai Kwun’s place in the flow of history, her work prompts us to consider how the past continues to shape the present, and how new possibilities can emerge from what has been cast aside.

The exhibition offers a space for contemplation, focusing on the subtlety of the quotidian. In a carefully constructed space-time delineated by gauze curtains and custom-made artificial lights, Hu Xiaoyuan reflects on and tells stories of evolution and destiny, mutation and exile, isolation and freedom, and community and the individual. The gauze curtains, one of the exhibition’s most distinctive features, are made of xiao, a semi-transparent silk fabric that creates various meditative paths through the space. Soft, delicate, and translucent, xiao has a shimmering, supple beauty and derives from raw silk—silk’s most natural, least processed form. Few people, however, are familiar with the process of extracting it. First, silk moth cocoons are exposed to steam, killing the silkworms inside and preventing them from destroying the cocoons’ silk protein fibres as they struggle to emerge. Raw silk is obtained by soaking the cocoons in hot water, softening the gummy substance that holds them together. A long silk fibre is then unreeled from each cocoon, and several fibres are twisted together to form a single strand. Formed in a process that encompasses tenderness and violence, completeness and incompleteness, and life and death, raw silk embodies Hu Xiaoyuan’s many years of thought on materials and metaphor. Xiao has been incorporated throughout the exhibition not just as curtains but as the material used to attach, cover, and wrap her works. The artist’s use of raw silk represents her distinctive take on selecting materials, an approach that integrates her observations of personal destiny with the biological, historical, and literary narratives that inform the materials. By combining this assortment of materials, the artist crafts one-of-a-kind on-site experiences and revelations.

One of the exhibition’s most striking sculpture, Corona on the Wasteland, or Wasteland on the Corona I, take inspiration from the poem “Corona” by the Jewish German-language poet Paul Celan. In both works, Hu Xiaoyuan places dysfunctional organic matter—including mulberry bark, raw silk unreeled from the cocoon, wool, bones made of corn fibre, dried-out honeycombs, and shrivelled fruits—inside a structure formed from discarded rebar and polished space-grade aluminium. The contrast between the materials creates a powerful visual impact that reflects each object’s individual destiny and the circumstances that brought it to this moment in time and space, echoing the metaphor in Celan’s poem: “Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: / We are friends. / We shell time from the nuts and teach it how to walk: / Time returns to the shell.” Serene yet fragile, the work “I Am Rooted, But I Flow.” also utilises space-grade aluminium panels and old rebar to construct a space reminiscent of a study. In one corner, a biography written by the artist hangs in a semi-literary, semi-vernacular style. Below, on the desk, an array of shells, corals, dragonfly wings, cicada wings, wool, and other materials are scattered across the surface. Each of these items was either part of an organism or an artefact of life's evolution, symbolising fragments of life and memory. The displayed materials resonate with the narrative in the text and seek to offer visual and sensory insight into life’s trajectories and transitions.

Other works in the exhibition are extensions of Hu Xiaoyuan’s earlier artistic practice, such as Wood

/ Time Branch, which continues the artist’s Wood series of paintings begun in 2008. In this series, she covers old wooden boards with Xiao, carefully traces the wood grain onto the silk fabric, and then completely covers the boards with water-borne wood paints. As she repeats this series of actions, the paintings take on the pattern of the wood grain, which is given new life on the raw silk. Life’s limitations also breathe new life into it—the wood grain on the silk fabric imitates the wood grain on the board even as the wood grain on the board limits the painting. In creating these paintings, the artist employs contradiction to demonstrate the relationship between reality and imitation, subjugation and liberation. The paintings are an intellectual enquiry into artistic language and shed light on life and time.

In addition to the works on display in the exhibition hall, Hu Xiaoyuan has created two large-scale outdoor works for Tai Kwun’s 44 and 55 Squared projects, which will be on view at the Tai Kwun Parade Ground throughout the exhibition period. These two monumental images exemplify the artist's distinctive approach to material selection, focusing on the intricate details of two installations – Corona on the Wasteland, or Wasteland on the Corona I and Carpel II - from Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering at Tai Kwun Contemporary.

Pi Li, the Curator of the exhibition and Head of Art at Tai Kwun, said, “Hu Xiaoyuan’s works are clearly quite different from the Chinese art people are accustomed to. Her creative orientation neither seeks to affirm a cultural or gender identity in grand narratives, nor uses visual symbols to express artistic concepts. Instead, she focuses on observing and experiencing the subtleties of everyday things and takes an almost inflexible approach to presenting them. Relying on a variety of everyday found materials, she takes the implicit conflict between philosophical speculation and daily life as her starting point, and channels this through the textures of her materials, literary metaphor, and her personal knowledge of natural science to convey those aspects of contemporary life and sensory aesthetics so difficult to express. Hu Xiaoyuan thus represents one aspect of Chinese art.”

Ying Kwok, the Senior Curator of Tai Kwun, said, “Hu Xiaoyuan’s Veering is more than just an exhibition, it's an immersive sensory experience. Through her intricate visual language - from material selection to spatial configuration - she has created an artistic realm that transcends verbal description and photographic documentation. This artistic journey requires us to slow down, feel with our bodies, and process with our minds. Each artwork stands as a silent poem, inviting viewers to engage in a deeper internal dialogue through their senses."

Education & Public Programmes

Tai Kwun Contemporary will host a variety of public programmes and educational events exploring the exhibition's themes. These include Tai Kwun Conversations, a panel discussion featuring the artist and special guests, offering insights into the exhibition's artistic concepts (held on 20 February, 7:30pm-9pm at the JC Cube). Additionally, there will be Teacher's Morning and Teacher's Workshop sessions, and Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary, which explore the artist's use of materials and narrative. Guided Tour: Who's Next? will provide docent-led tours delving into the artist's creative process, techniques, and inspirations. The Hi! & Seek Corner, an open space on the 2nd floor, will be open as usual for visitor dialogue, exploration, and interactive experiences related to the exhibition.

Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering

Curators: Pi Li with Shuman Wang