Cheng Mun Chang

The opening of M+, Hong Kong’s new museum of visual culture, in 2021 was a significant peak in over a decade of arts infrastructure development in Hong Kong. During such development, artists and curators in Hong Kong have been navigating a peculiar tension: while there are increasing opportunities due to the opening of new arts institutions, as part of the city’s push to attract global capital, actual participation in programming by major institutions and the global art market remains limited for most local artists, curators, and critics, who sustain their creative careers through support from a variety of jobs, space-sharing strategies, and financial support from both state and corporate avenues. This research, through ethnographic work with artists, curators, and critics, across both everyday life and the exceptional form of the art event, asks how art is produced outside of the rarified studio and gallery spaces of the art world. It investigates the ways in which quotidian practices of making art, in its production, circulation, and display, might produce new urban publics that contest pressures of constant growth demanded by global capitalism. Primary research for this project takes the form of semi-structured interviews at sites of artmaking and display, go-along interviews and mapping exercises throughout the city, participant observation at arts organizations and art events, and archival research in libraries and personal collections located in Hong Kong. In tracking the temporal and spatial arrangements that take place in Hong Kong’s art world, examining how art emerges from and in the city, the research investigates how the process of making art has the potential to also make the city, both within and against the dominant futures being projected onto Hong Kong.