Tai Kwun Contemporary Spotlights Tao Hui's 'Land Beyond Living'
Even in hardship, the Beijing-based artist searches for moments of beauty.
At Tai Kwun Contemporary, Tao Hui opens the doors to his cabinet of curiosities that is In the Land Beyond Living, now on view until February 2, 2025. Through painting, video, sculpture and sound, the Beijing-based artist renders a world of struggle through his signature, absurdist approach. From migrant workers in booming cities to the nouveau riche socialites with a spiritual hunger, he hunts for new ways to make sense out of conflicting, complex realities.
For Hui’s first institutional foray in Hong Kong, the exhibition features five newly-commissioned installations alongside other recent works. Central to the exhibition is “Chilling Terror Sweeps the North,” an immersive video installation housed with a semi-opaque, paneled structure. Blending dreams and reality, the film’s surrealist tendencies give rise to the surrounding installations in the main gallery space, including the rainbow of glass chicken feet in “Money Grab Hand” and the snake-wrapped, ceramic toilet in “Cuddle.”
Elsewhere, a wooden figure oozes under the weight of a bright, three-meter-tall screen in “Hardworking.” The screen, spilling onto the floor, depicts a frazzled livestream host who, like her wooden counterpart, is on the brink of a meltdown.
Akin to Hui’s past work, the exhibition is threaded by a sense of social alienation, whether it be through gender, class, culture or ethnicity. In a recent release, the gallery writes, “The artist interweaves migration flows, geographical disparities and the relentless drive for a better life…opening up new angels from which to contemplate contemporary society in China and the human condition at large.”
Tai Kwun Contemporary
10 Hollywood Road,
Central, Hong Kong
