The Person Walking with His Head Covered: A Panel Discussion with Ricky Yeung, Pak Sheung Chuen, and Sampson Wong

Date: Oct 27, 2017
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Para Site is pleased to present a panel discussion by artists Ricky Yeung, Pak Sheung Chuen, and Sampson Wong, moderated by curator and writer Yang Yeung, as part of Chris Evans and Pak Sheung Chuen: Two Exhibitions, in which both artists offer a mediation on power through diverging approaches with presentations including newly commissioned works.

This panel discussion will address the politics of art and its relationship to social movements. Yeung, Pak and Wong represent artists from three different generations in Hong Kong, who each endeavour, through their works, to experiment with and to challenge how art can respond to social and political change. In the discussion, the panelists will debate both the precariousness and the potency of art, considering its ability to insert itself into a system, negotiating and manoeuvring from within. This discussion will question how art can act as an agent or tool used to address issues of social concern and as a means of raising awareness within the art world and in civil society. Taking a step further, they will investigate how visual production responds to the implications of political theology.

The discussion will be conducted in Cantonese.

Para Site Art Space is financially supported by the Art Development Matching Grants Pilot Scheme of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

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The content of these activities does not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

About the panelists

Ricky Yeung Sau Churk

Yeung is an artist and art educator who conducts community arts projects for diverse audiences to cultivate an appreciation for the city of Hong Kong. Yeung’s works have been shown at the City University of Hong Kong, Fringe Club, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong Museum of Arts, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Para Site, Sha Tin Town Hall, and the University of Hong Kong. He is the recipient of the 2007 Chief Executive’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Arts Education).

Community engagement is central to his practice, which includes his role as chair of Video Power (1999–2002), committee member of Curriculum Development (Visual Art) Education Bureau (2004–2013), Chair of Center of Community Cultural Development (2010–currently) and committee member of Society of Indigenous Learning (2013–currently). Yeung has been an art education columnist with Sunday Mingpao since 2009.

Pak Sheung Chuen

Pak’s works often slyly alters the experience of everyday life. He explores the mental and social space that is structured through our perception of the world, and investigates the role of coincidence and arbitrariness that unites reality and fiction. He places himself in various situations, considering his writings as a medium, Pak conceives his works as actions or subtle manipulations of the regular course of events.

Sampson Wong

Wong is an artist, independent curator, academic, and urbanist from Hong Kong. He is currently Lecturer at Department of Liberal Arts Studies at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He engages in art-making, curatorial practice, teaching, research, and writing. Wong sees these practices as intellectual means to explore issues around urbanism, space, power, and freedom. His research interests also include the politics of epidemics and Hong Kong studies. He is now writing about plagues in Hong Kong, urbanism and art, and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement.

About the moderator

Yang Yeung is an art writer and an independent curator. She founded the non-profit soundpocket in 2008 and is currently its Artistic Director. In 2015, she started independent project A Walk with A3, located at a back alley in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong to support the right of art to be in the streets and right of pedestrians to encounter art as a daily experience. She is member of the independent art critics collective Art Appraisal Club (HK) and the International Art Critics Association (HK). She was awarded the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in 2013-14. She currently teaches Classics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

About the exhibition

Chris Evans, Pak Sheung Chuen: Two Exhibitions
Sept 23 – Dec 3, 2017

Para Site is pleased to present two exhibitions by Chris Evans and Pak Sheung Chuen. Both presentations include newly commissioned works and are curated by Freya Chou. With diverging approaches, both artists offer a mediation on power. From the protocols of job interviews to the conventions and formalities of courts of law, Evans’s and Pak’s works tease out the complex relationships between citizens and society.