Eva Kit Wah Man

Issues of Contemporary
Art and Aesthetics
in Chinese Context

123
Eva Kit Wah Man
Department of Humanities and Creative
Writing
Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR

ISSN 2199-9058 ISSN 2199-9066 (electronic)

Chinese Contemporary Art Series
ISBN 978-3-662-46509-7 ISBN 978-3-662-46510-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3

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 The Trinity of “Hong Kong -China- the World”:
The Battle of Cultural Identities as a Form
of Hegemony in Art in Postcolonial Hong Kong
(Since 1990s)
During the past 30 years, visual art in Hong Kong has dis-
tinguished itself from other art forms, undergone a meta-
morphosis in both concepts and styles. During the 1960s,
Hong Kong painters have developed meaningful and sys-
tematic theories of painting and aesthetics, which reflect a
concern for cultural identity. In doing so, they revealed
conflicts that they were encountering—conflicts between
traditional Chinese aesthetics and modern Western aesthet-
ics, which were reflected in their paintings and experimental
work, resulting in innovative and revolutionary develop-
ments. This chapter continues the discussion in previous
chapters the quest of cultural identity among local painters in
the early eras before proceeding to the later developments in
visual art before and after 1997, when Hong Kong was
returned to China. It discusses the problems encountered in
engaging traditions among local painters and curators. The
battle of artistic identities is investigated, negating any
reductive or essentialistic descriptions of the cultural and
artistic identities of the city.
11.1 The Hegemony of Cultural Identity
in Art
11.1.1 The Concept of “Hegemony” Revisited
It is well known that Antonio Gramsci practices a genuinely
“open” Marxism that extends many insights of Marxist
theory into new questions and conditions, that attempt to
explain complex social phenomena in the modern world
(Hall 1996, p. 412). One basic component of Gramsci’s
concept of “hegemony” is that it operates in a collective
society, in which entire masses are educated and assimilated
This chapter was originally published in BOREC (REVIJA
ZA ZGODOVINO, ANTROPOLOGIJO IN KNJIZEVNOST) (The
Fighter, The Journal for History, Anthropology and
Literature), Ljubljana, Slovenia: the Society for History,
Anthropology and Literature & the Ministry of Culture of Slovenia.
LV, 2003, st. 608–611, (December, 2003), pp. 219–237.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
E.K.W. Man, Issues of Contemporary Art and Aesthetics in Chinese Context,
Chinese Contemporary Art Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-46510-3_11
11
according to the rules of moral conduct that are legal obli-
gations in the eyes of the state (Gramsci 1971).
Dick Hebdige’s interpretation of Gramsci’s hegemony is
that whoever has hegemony also has the means of material
as well as mental production at its disposal. Hebdige quoted
Stuart Hall’s early writing in 1977 that hegemony refers to a
situation, where a provisional alliance of certain social
groups can exert “total social authority” over other subor-
dinate groups, not simply by coercion or by direct imposi-
tion of ruling ideas, but by ‘winning and shaping’ consent so
that the power of the dominant classes appears both legiti-
mate and ‘natural’. Subordinate groups are then contained
within an ideological space that does not seem at all ‘ideo-
logical’, but appears instead to be permanent and ‘natural,’
and to be outside history and beyond particular interests.
Thus, hegemony is, as Gramsci said, a “moving equilibrium”
containing relations of force favorable or unfavorable to this
or that tendency (Hebdige 1979, pp. 15–16).
Stuart Hall was so correct in pointing out that, while
Gramsci was not the first person to introduce the concept of
“Hegemony,” he had well elaborated this basic Marxist
concept and applied it to today’s growing social complex.
Here, I would like to visit Hall’s more recent reading of the
concept of hegemony, which I find so agreeable, especially,
where he pointed out its usefulness for the study of race and
ethnicity. I have summarized his reading into the following
segments (Hall 1996, pp. 412–440). First, periodization is
always crucial. Because ‘hegemony’ is a very particular,
historically specific, and temporary ‘moment’ in the life of a
society, it is rare for the form of unity that enables “hege-
mony” to be totalized, and for a society to set a new his-
torical agenda completely for itself under the leadership of a
specific formation or constellation of social forces. Second,
it is precisely the process of the coordination of the interests
of a dominant group with the general interests of other
groups and with the life of the state as a whole that consti-
tutes the ‘hegemony’ of a particular historical bloc. The
‘leading elements’ in a historic bloc may be only one
79
80
fraction of the dominant economic class—for example, that
of national rather than international capital. Third, we must
note the multidimensional, multi-spatial character of hege-
mony, and also take into account the intellectual, moral,
political, and economic collective will throughout society.
The ‘winning over’ of these diverse sectors is the result of
‘expansive, universalizing alliances’ that cement the historic
bloc under a specific leadership. Fourth, though ‘leadership’
has its ‘coercive’ aspects, it is ‘led’ by the winning consent
of subordinate interests. Put somewhat differently, hege-
mony is sustained not exclusively through state coercion, but
is grounded in voluntary consensus of religious life, cultural
organizations, ethnic identities, and so on. Fifth, as a form of
ideology, a popular hegemony of culture organizes the
masses and determines the ways people represent their
positions, struggles, practices, representations, languages,
and customs in any given historical society. Finally, Hall’s
reading of hegemony focused on where race and ethnicity
have always had powerful national and popular-culture
ramifications, and in this respect, Gramsci’s segments listed
above have proven to be immensely enlightening.
11.1.2 The Concept of Cultural Identity
With respect to the tension between the local and the global
in contemporary cultural discourses, what is now regarded as
myth is the usual assumption of an enduring, stable,
homogeneous, and integrated cultural identity—at the same
time unique and distinctive—coming out of a local culture.
This myth is formulated from at least two assumptions in the
nineteenth century: (1) the models of social change in which
the past was regarded as having simple, direct, and
strong-bond social relationships; and (2) the anthropological
model that emphasizes the need to provide ethnographically
rich descriptions of the particularity of relatively isolated
small towns or village (Featherstone 1996, pp. 47–48).
Yet Mike Featherstone is correct in saying that there is
nothing so powerful as the image of an integrated organic
community in our childhood. This organic community is a
specific space and place that anchors one’s identity and those
of one’s significant others. This space is emotionally
invested and sedimented with symbolic associations, and has
also generated powerful, emotionally sustaining rituals,
ceremonies, and collective memories, including knowledges
and beliefs that are taken for granted. This organic com-
munity can be a city or a nation but is essentially an imag-
inary space, because it provides a quasi-religious sense of
belonging and fellowship (Featherstone 1996).
According to Featherstone, calling this community as
nation has at least the special meanings that Raymond
Williams assigned it, namely that “nation” is radically con-
nected with “native,” a bonding of quite fundamental human
11 The Trinity of “Hong Kong -China- the World” …
and natural importance (Williams 1983, p. 180). The idea of
“nation” also engages crucial questions of the origins, dif-
ferences, and distinctiveness of a people. Thus, conflicts
underline the sense of boundary between the “ingroup” and
the “outgroup.”
This chapter agrees with the formulation, that “the artic-
ulation of the particularity of a local place will tend to
become sharpened and more well defined when the locality
becomes locked into power struggles and elimination con-
tests with its neighbors” (Featherstone 1996, pp. 54–55).
I also agree with Featherstone on the following observations
with respect to the situation of Hong Kong: shifts in inter-
dependencies and power balances may increase the local
people’s consciousness of the symbolic boundary between
themselves and others; the contemporary global situation has
complicated the current beliefs that there has been an
expansion of cultural repertoires and the capacity to handle a
wide variety of symbolic materials, out of which different
identities can be formed and reformed according to different
situations for people’s specific purposes; the contemporary
global situation has indeed intensified pressures to forge a
distinctive and coherent identity, and has initiated responses
to rediscover particularity, localism, and difference.
The general assumption is that race, geography, tradition,
language, size, or some combination of these are inadequate
for determining national essence, and yet people have strong
feelings for their nations, fight wars for them, and write
narrative fictions on their behalf. Yet there are also others
who emphasize the creative side of nation formation, sug-
gesting its cultural importance (Brennan 1995, p. 172).
Besides the concept of nation, there is also that of ‘eth-
nicity’. As Stuart Hall pointed out, ethnicity acknowledges
the place of history, language, and culture in the construction
of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all dis-
courses are placed, positioned, situated, and that all knowl-
edge is contextual. Ethnic identities, while not equivalent to
national or racial identities, are also crucial to our subjective
sense of who we are (Hall 1996, pp. 226–227).
11.1.3 The Significance of Cultural Identity
in Art: Recent Trends in Incorporating
Cultural Identity in Art
The relation of art and hegemony exists in at least two
senses: that of the presupposition, by cultural institutions,
and traditional modes of representation, of a society in which
high art plays an essential role in legitimizing hegemony in
order to support a cultural establishment and its claims to
aesthetic knowledge; and the avant-garde revolt against a
tradition of high art as a support system of cultural hege-
mony and what was perceived as its hegemonic role in a
political sense (Huyssen 1993, p. 120).
11.1 The Hegemony of Cultural Identity in Art
There are many ways that a work of art can be said to have a
special relationship to a particular place. For instance, an art
work can represent or comment on a place, and can also be an
index of cultural identity. One can also question the relation of
artists to their artistic heritage, view the tradition of artists as a
burden; and offer new ways of looking at that tradition. In this
sense, museum (as the custodian of tradition) is significant in
terms of cultural identity. A museum can present us with an
interpretation of the past, or with a partial view of it. It is now
recognized that museum functions as an agent of specific
epistemological positions, and that it plays a more important
role in the construction—rather than in the preservation—of
cultural identity (Clarke 1996, p. 34).
This chapter, using postcolonial Hong Kong as a living
example, demonstrates the ways that artistic creativity
incorporates the concept of cultural identity, challenges its
stability and hegemony, and reformulates its meaning and
content. I will disclose the way that artists realize the power
and influence of identity formation by making it a dominant
and therefore in its own turn hegemonic theme, especially in
a postcolonial space where there are “internal” battles of
cultural identities. We will also see the official museum
playing a significant role in these antagonisms.
11.2 The Founding of Cultural Identity
in Art: The Case of Postcolonial Hong
Kong
11.2.1 Background and History Before
the 1990s
In Chap. 7, I disclose the background and brief history of the
founding of cultural identity in the visual art arena of Hong
Kong in the New Ink Movement in the 1960s (Man 1996).
According to these artists, traditional Chinese painting
was repetitive and failed to express feelings related to their
lives and times. New ink painting was a reform of the old
Chinese tradition, as well as an embellishment of the Wes-
tern academic tradition.
The spirit of the new ink painting offered a mental bal-
ance of people living in a colony overrun by material and
technological advancements. The tradition of ink painting
manifested the spiritual principle of traditional Chinese
aesthetics in prominent Confucian and Daoist fervors, which
connect artistic content and form to personal, spiritual, and
ethical cultivation. A return to the root of one’s (Chinese)
tradition would not only provide a good foundation and
knowledge of artistic creativity in terms of techniques and
ideas, but also cultivate one’s personality and ways of
existence. During the experiment, some members were
aware of the problems of “Orientalism” and “Otherness” in
contemporary postcolonial discourse. Supposedly, some
81
Westerners tended to look for their own idea of the Oriental
tradition in the work of these artists in order to extract a
particular significance that did not take into account the
creative originality of their work and its relation to the
contemporary world (Wong 1966). Yet Hong Kong artists
accepted the fact that although living in a British colony at
the time, their ways of living, thinking, and visual habits
were all related to the Chinese tradition. When Chinese
painters produced artistic expressions of the movement, their
productions were still Chinese paintings. Previously, it had
been difficult to identify “Hong Kong painting” because it
was ambiguous, contradictory, and contained split elements.
These artists also realized that the colonial situation had
provided them with no sense of belonging, but then this also
meant an ample opportunity to mold the future. When they
appropriated Western art vogues, the artists would be critical
of the relevance of these vogues to their own everyday
reality (Wong 1970).
In my previous study of Hong Kong fashion and
women’s identities of the 1960s, I see a parallel development
to the blending experiment I have just outlined, as fashion is
also a locus of struggle for identity. Searching for identity in
fashion of the 1960s in Hong Kong can be read as a response
to the friction between East and West in the political and
cultural dimensions of that era. Those expressions of rude-
ness, toughness, and freedom from care signified by jeans
and the sexy, girlish, and liberated looks of miniskirts copied
from the West can be seen as forms of deploying the
periphery of colonized women to challenge the ideologies of
the center. I see that the fashion of the 1960s confronted the
feudal Chinese constraints on women by liberating women’s
bodies through fashionable dress; by using modern Western
design; and by challenging Chinese submissive attitudes
toward the British government in the choice of gestures and
rebellious ways of dressing.
In the 1970s, as mentioned in the previous chapter, an
increasing number of local artists created their own individ-
ual styles. In 1975, the Urban Council organized the first
“Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition” at the
Hong Kong Museum of Art, a milestone in the exhibition of
modern paintings created by local artists. The government
sponsored the exhibition, reflecting its support of local artists.
In 1978, the “Exhibition of Hong Kong Artists: the Early
Generation” was again organized by the museum, providing
a retrospective of the artistic performance of local painters in
earlier years. The act demonstrated Hong Kong’s commit-
ment in developing a local artistic identity, and encouraged a
historical awareness of the talent within its border.
For various reasons, beginning in the 1980s, the “Chinese
complex” of younger Hong Kong artists had lost its vigor. In
my article on the founding of cultural identity in the visual
art arena of Hong Kong before the 1990s, I discussed these
reasons, as that the colony progressed to become a thriving
82
international and commercial center, and more artists pre-
ferred to follow artistic developments in the international
community rather than remain within the Chinese tradition.
Compared to the generation of artists before them, younger
artists had more freedom to create, ironically, in a state of
“deracination”. Chinese tradition was only another option, in
the same situation as other traditions in postmodern spaces
(Clarke 1995, pp. 82–84). The situation of late capitalism
happened to parallel the early stages of colonial indepen-
dence. Mass culture and entertainment industries distracted
people from reflections on the problems of race, social class,
cultural identity, and power structure in colonial rule. As a
result of commercialization, the art education curriculum in
Hong Kong focused on Western techniques and concepts
during the 1980s.
11.2.2 The Situation Around 1990s
The planned return of Hong Kong by the British to China in
1997 did not create a real sense of colonial independence,
especially in terms of cultural influences. Since there was no
clear direction in art and culture, the city continued to train
its designers according to the needs of commercial markets
in 1990s. Artists kept on developing individual styles, and
enjoyed their freedom following either Chinese tradition or
Western contemporary art trends. There were exhibitions in
sites beyond the walls of galleries or museums that enabled
art to interact directly with new audiences. Since there was
no screening before exhibitions, artworks ranged from per-
sonal narratives to sociological surveys reflecting the life of
Hong Kong.
The 1997 date of the Hand-Over itself is porous and
elusive: In the early 1990s, people in Hong Kong had
already begun the countdown to the anticipated date of 1997.
As one local scholar put it, the people of Hong Kong had
already stepped into a postcolonial situation long before the
formal end of colonial sovereignty. The quest for cultural
identities, the practices of different forms of resistance, and
the discussion of other significant postcolonial concerns
suddenly flourished and continued to be conducted. When
the date 1997 was coming up, the theme of cultural identity
dominated more and more artistic activities, and retold the
special history of the city, and emphasized its unique bilin-
gual and bicultural space.
Local curators and artists initiated events, and at the same
time they decentralized the power in the art world. An
example is the “In Search of Art” exhibition in the
mid-1990s that invited residents of Hong Kong to submit for
the show art objects that they had lived with. The dialogic
approach and the open-ended nature invited spectators to ask
questions to reconsider not only their own ideas of what art
was, but also the nature of the objects chosen, and the
11 The Trinity of “Hong Kong -China- the World” …
emotional elements that explained why they had chosen
them. Critics said that what came across very strongly in the
exhibition was a sense of history. There were many exhibit
objects that had been handed down from relatives and that
functioned as testimony of the continuity of the sense of
family over generations. Even the large quantity of popular
cultural objects in the exhibition functioned as markers of
history (Clarke 1996, pp. 28–30). Another exhibition, “One
Day in Hong Kong,” which showed photographs of Hong
Kong by local residents, continued the investigative spirit
and the desire to involve people in a collective project of
self-definition.
It is natural to be curious about the part the Chinese
heritage in art and culture played in the retrospective under
the pressure of the political change anticipated in 1997. An
art critic raised the following question about the fact that
many people in Hong Kong approached that heritage with a
degree of ambivalence (Clarke 1996, p. 35):
Chinese traditions may be very engaging, but one engages with
an enemy as well as getting engaged to a loved one. One might
wish to ask who is active in this encounter, us or tradition? Do
we engage with it, or is it engaging (fascinating, captivating,
enthralling) us?
This question came from the new generation difference.
Most of these new generation artists were born in the colony,
and they did not have the cultural burden of their refugee
elders. I agree with the observation that Chinese cultural
traditions had been less immediate to these artists, and so
they were less deeply invested in it. As mentioned above, the
tradition was only one option among many from which they
can draw, and they tended to be more novelistic in their
appropriations. Given that many of them had their formal art
training in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, or
North America, their work tended unabashedly to adopt the
idiom of Western modernism (Clarke 1996, pp. 75–76).
In 1989, the unexpected June 4 massacre brought not
only fear and unrest, but also the urge of an assertion of a
Hong Kong identity. Artists who had already been very
cosmopolitan and more locally orientated, faced the chal-
lenge of expressing the qualities of the Hong Kong-ness.
There is a saying that Hong Kong not only lacks any high
cultural tradition of its own that can be a resource, but it also
lacks support from either an ethnic or a national narrative of
the 1990s. Hong Kong was not influenced by Communist
China in the 1960s, but because it was then undergoing
tremendous changes under capitalism, its identity became
more and more ambiguous.
When the time came for “Hong Kong-ness” to distinguish
itself from, “Chineseness,” the situation became more diffi-
cult. It was assumed that foreigners expected Hong Kong to
be subsumed by Chinese fervor. Therefore, the following
statement (Clarke 1996, p. 76):
11.2 The Founding of Cultural Identity in Art …
Hong Kong had no separate existence prior to colonization, and
(unlike all other colonies) cannot even dream of autonomy in the
future. 1997 will bring no independence day, only absorption in
another unitary nation state, and a walk-on role in that state’s
narrative of wholeness recovered. The absence of a resource
from history and cultural tradition means that Hong Kong
identity can only be expressed in art as a trace, as a species of
non-essentialist, unrooted, postmodern identity.
It had been observed that given difficulty of elaborating a
Hong Kong cultural identity positively, some younger artists
have attempted to assert it negatively, that is, to define
themselves in terms of their distance from Chinese tradi-
tions. Artists in the 1990s seemed to be able to live more
easily with their rootless identities and to produce, within a
Western modernist formal vocabulary, an art that is in many
respects deeply postmodernism and primarily local in its
address (Clarke 1996, p. 80).
It has been noted that the immediate sentiment shared
among local artists after the return of Hong Kong to China in
1997 is related to the sad disparity between the colony’s
economic modernity and the undeveloped nature of its
political, social, and cultural life. The new government
claimed that it had no intention of ``allowing Hong Kong to
be used as a base for subversive activities against the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China.'' There was a reaction to the
rejection of a proposal for a permanent site for a replica
statue of democracy. People pointed out that the diversity of
cultural expression in Hong Kong was hampered by the
presence of statutory oppression in other areas of social life
(for example the illegality of homosexuality) and by the
absence of any real arena for democratic political partici-
pation (Clarke 1996, p. 145).
11.2.3 “One Art, Two Systems”—The Problems
in Engaging Traditions
11.2.3.1 Hegemony of the Chinese Tradition
in Art
As Hong Kong prepares to commemorate its fifth anniver-
sary as a Special Region of China in 2002, the city has
already planned numerous art events contributed by artists of
Mainland China. Most of the events are tradition oriented,
and some have been modified or modernized in form or
content. It is obvious that China now views Hong Kong as
one of its outlets of its artistic exports to the world, among
which traditional forms are still a priority in response to
foreign demands and markets. It has also been natural for
Hong Kong art museums to exhibit the work and documents
of the old nation. Far from being coerced to view them by
official means, there is a growing number of audience
embracing these works. We should note that the structure of
the city population is changing rapidly, with about 200
83
people immigrating legally from the mainland daily. But
does this imply a hegemony of the Chinese tradition in art?
As an event celebrating the fifth anniversary, and also as
one of the numerous events commemorating ancient Chinese
culture, the Hong Kong Museum of Art recently looked back
to the beginning of Chinese civilization with an exhibition of
cultural relics from Henan Province. At the same time, the
museum’s chief curator, Christina Chu, is sponsoring a
proposal submitted to the Cultural and Heritage Commission
(CHC) for the establishment of a thematic Museum of Ink.
In an interview conducted by the magazine Orientations for
its June 2002 issue, Chu revealed the future direction of the
official museum and reflected on the cultural role and
identity it should engage.
The interview disclosed that even though art and culture
develop and evolve with economic and social conditions, the
Culture and Heritage Commission (CHC) of Hong Kong (a
high-level advisory body formed in 2000), has set out in its
‘Terms of Reference’ the necessity of ``fostering a sense of
belonging and cultural identity among the public''. Though
Hong Kong is grounded in Chinese culture and looks to the
mainland for its future, it must remember that it owes its
reputation as an international city to its colonial past and these
are elements that make Hong Kong special. While these ele-
ments can induce cultural schizophrenia, they can also be
harnessed to promote a harmonious duality. The CHC believes
that local museums have an important role to play in all this.
To the question: “How can Hong Kong ‘reposition’ its
museum to reflect its uniqueness?” Christina Chu’s respon-
ded in her elaboration of her proposal of the thematic
Museum of Ink. As an active promoter of contemporary
Chinese painting on the world stage, Chu believes that the
medium possesses all the necessary qualities that reflect the
vitality, plurality, and modernity of Hong Kong without
losing its ‘Chineseness’. The Hong Kong Museum of Art
will continue to promote and preserve Hong Kong art. Its
scope as a regional museum first included the Pearl River
delta and was then extended to the rest of China. Therefore
the tone has been set: From Hong Kong to China to the
World. One should note that the city museum used to be run
by the abolished democratically elected Urban Council, and
is currently under the Leisure and Cultural Services
Department, which is overseen by the Home Affairs Bureau.
This is an evolutionary development, and the changeover
has signaled another phase of review.
Why ink? It was said that ink painting and its calligraphy
are considered elevated forms of expression. Aesthetically
they are both the essence and manifestation of composite
literati culture since they involve poetry, painting, prose,
history, religion, philosophy, and even statecraft. China’s
more than a thousand years of continuous development may
84
be its greatest contribution to the world. According to sta-
tistics, there are over a million people painting, producing
art, and practicing calligraphy at national, provincial, and
village levels. But when Chu was asked if the idea of the
proposed museum was patriotic and nationalistic, she
answered: “it is not about the interest of one curator, but
about Hong Kong, China, and the World.”
Chu also admitted that the Hong Kong Museum of Art
had undergone changes in the context of the ‘meaning’ and
coming of age of the identity of Hong Kong after its return to
China. She admitted that as many people were still haunted
by the suffering of their parents and grandparents, so
therefore, the China-Hong Kong identity would have to
prove itself. This is what she said:
The word ‘China’ itself predicates some kind of backwardness
because it is about a power structure. The matrix is one where
there is a center and everything else becomes marginalized. Using
what happens at the center as a benchmark may connote a level of
progress, but there is value and differentiation in it already. At the
moment the world is Eurocentric and anything outside is mar-
ginalized. For Hong Kong and the rest of the Third World, the
world is a dichotomy of East and West, but the world today is
really much bigger than the West. We really have to take people’s
vision and expand the focus to all other cultures. So what are we
talking about when we talk about globalization? We are talking
about pluralism and diversity. Unless we properly position our
culture within a pluralistic global setting, unless we regain our
personal dignity through pride in our own culture, we will never
be able to conduct a dialogue with anybody on an equal basis.
Emotionally, this is really important. The situation and attitude is
hard to reserve but it is imperative that we do it–that is why we
have a permanent department of Chinese antiquities.
It is obvious that Chu finds the cultural root of Hong
Kong in the Chinese tradition. Her vision for the future is the
trinity of Hong Kong, China, and the World. “It is important
to build a frame of reference to compare and understand
Hong Kong’s place in the world,” she said, and to put things
in the cultural context—both in terms of material as well as
intellectual resources.
In terms of the world, it is appropriate for the interna-
tional city to expand the worldview of museum visitors.
Good exhibitions from traditional cultures like Indian and
also modern cutting-edge, one should be launched. While
the root of identity is tied to Chinese tradition, the postco-
lonial art museum should care about the fissure between the
past and modernity. Contemporary Chinese artistic creativ-
ity, though provocative and unorthodox, is assumed to be
capable of asserting cultural pride. “There is no point telling
the world how great our ancestors were if we cannot show
people what this generation is doing or not doing,” Chu said.
Chu is clearly aware that the position of Hong Kong and
its history provides the cutting-edge means of knowing what
China is lacking and what the future is for the world. The
official museum can be a dispassionate platform for the
interchange of frames of reference, ethics or values, and be
11 The Trinity of “Hong Kong -China- the World” …
an anchoring point for cultural dialogues. Practically, the
museum can be a first-class showcase for the best quality
artistic production of China, something that the world,
especially the international Chinese community, would be
interested in, and can also be an international marking center
for contemporary Chinese art. Chu described the role of the
city museum:
“I think it is a great cultural touristic venture with man-
ifold implications… The energy, the modern dynamics of
Chinese art should be properly showcased.” There should be
positional and market-oriented considerations while talking
about the hegemony (in the sense that we have analyzed it)
of the Chinese tradition in art.
11.2.3.2 The Battles of Cultural Identities in Art
How about the Hong Kong art that had undergone struggles
and experiments? It has been observed that in the city
museum’s exhibits, Hong Kong art had long been carefully
separated into the categories of East and West. As one critic
commented, “people always talk about ‘East meets West’….
so far we have only met the parents (China and the West),
but there is no child…. Hong Kong is not constructed in the
narrative of the city museum as a place with its own artistic
identity, but a site on which two other artistic traditions meet
—and meet in polite, neighborly, coexistence” (Clarke 1996,
p. 15). The exhibits of Hong Kong art in the Hong Kong
Museum of Art seem predicated on this notion of East and
West, categorizing the territory’s art as either ‘Western’ or
‘Chinese’, mainly according to the media they are in, and
providing separate galleries for each. When there are exhi-
bitions of Hong Kong art, people often comment that the
museum has been unwilling to engage intellectually with the
works exhibited. The titles of the exhibitions have been so
general as to be almost without meaning, and the catalogs
have been concerned only with providing information that is
of almost no value to spectators.
The interview with Chu revealed that the sense of Hong
Kong identity was difficult to separate from China after the
Hand-Over, and that Chinese influences was sure to domi-
nate the scene with growing speed. We were reminded that
Hong Kong did not have the colonial power’s culture
imposed on it as was the case with other colonies, and it
indeed remained in many ways a very Chinese city, despite
the obvious differences between its political, educational,
and other structures and those of the mainland.
Some curators now tend to frame Hong Kong art as a
facet of Chinese art. These curators favor artists whose work
can be comfortably placed in relation to Chinese tradition.
They claim that ‘modernizing’ the tradition is acceptable, but
rupture from it less so (Clarke 1996, pp. 50–51). This was
where the sardonic phrase ‘One art, two systems’ emerged
from, the systems of the Chinese tradition and the West.
“One art, two systems” is analogous to the political phrase
11.2 The Founding of Cultural Identity in Art …
“One country, two systems” that was used to describe the
promise of having 50 years unchanged in its political system
after the city was politically transferred. This approach could
also have been designed to prevent cultural miscegenation
(Clarke 1996, p. 51).
Even so, there are people who expect the museum to
launch the development of the art of Hong Kong, including
the early oil painting under the Western influences and those
of the “New Ink Movement” painters of the 1960s. The truth
is that without a collection to provide a base and resource, it
will be impossible to tell a story of Hong Kong’s art history,
or even to foreground what is distinctive about Hong Kong
art (Clarke 1996, p. 50). Ironically, the suggested artistic
identity was introduced successfully in other museums, such
as the topic of Hong Kong to design identity in the Hong
Kong Museum of History’s “Made in Hong Kong” show.
More and more artistic creativities are exhibited outside the
institution of the museum, which are also essential for a
thriving Hong Kong art scene.
In reviewing the arts policy of the city, we can see that
there is also a yearning need to facilitate and to recognize the
creation of innovative local art. This also implies a need for
cultural democracy in Hong Kong to create an open cultural
arena (a free press or even an open political arena) for
diverse artistic attitudes.
What are the implications of the recently suggested the-
matic ink museum that was claimed to be unique? Ink on
Chinese paper, applied with the Chinese brush are the tools
and materials that have been used over an enormously long
period of Chinese painting history. Since these tools carry a
particularly strong flavor of tradition, they have an important
part to play in sustaining a sense of cultural continuity not
only at the level of technique. We have read from Chu’s
recent interview that the proposal for an ink museum actu-
ally has Chinese cultural identity in mind. So one can guess
that it would denote not just a past New ink movement in
Hong Kong that had displayed the anxiety inherent in the
task of attempting to be both Chinese and modern art. When
modernity and Chineseness were not presented as harmo-
niously compatible, one should admit that the artists
involved in the movement were brave in founding a local
cultural identity, and attempting to engage the concrete
interaction of Chinese and Western artistic elements. Many
would name the movement an important phase of “Hong
Kong art”.
The same question was raised in the previous chapter,
“What is the ‘Hong Kong’ in the phrase Hong Kong art?”
with reference to the more basic question, “Is it possible to
have art of one’s own when, in the context of postcolonial
discourse, art is engaged in constant interactions and
exchanges in terms of power and resistance?” The answer
seems to be that the artistic expression of postcolonial Hong
Kong is nothing but the ambivalent achievement caused by
85
the collision of diverse cultures and the dialectics that have
ensued from various forms of hegemony and resistance,
which can be summarized as battles over cultural identities.
11.3 Problems of the Founding of “Cultural
Identity” in PostColonialism: The Case
of “Hong Kong Art”
It has been suggested that the difficulty of handling
increasing levels of cultural complexity, and the doubts and
anxieties they often engender, are reasons that “localism,” or
the desire to return home, becomes an important theme—
regardless of whether this home is real or imaginary or
simulated, or whether it is manifested in a fascination with
the sense of belonging and affiliation. It is not helpful to
regard the global and the local as dichotomies separated in
space or time, but instead to see that the processes of
globalization and localization are inextricably bound toge-
ther in the current phase (Featherstone 1996, p. 47).
It is true that Hong Kong is basically a cosmopolis that
came of age only in the late modern period, and the city is
ever growing and expanding, both physically and culturally.
It was an international city exposed to globalization pro-
cesses long before the end of its colonial status. Under the
cliché and reality of “East meets West,” some local painters
grounded their artistic identity on either traditionalism or
nationalism, progressing, and making important artistic
innovations. One can describe daring experiments like the
New Ink as liberation processes in colonial territories, which
emerged during a time of uncertainty and of significant or
representational undecidability (Bhabha 1995, p. 206). More
to the point of Hong Kong’s intense modernization process
was a constant reminder to younger artists that they were not
living in old China, which had become the Communist
China, and this made the art of what seemed (to them) a
distant homeland less relevant to their living environment.
As mentioned, the colonial government’s localization
policy after the leftist political riots against British rule in
1967 was originally tied up with the promotion, even pro-
paganda, of a growing and modernized Hong Kong. The
policy had also laid the groundwork for Hong Kong’s search
for its identity through art. As I mentioned in previous
chapters of this book, while Chinese citizens in Hong Kong
had difficulty identifying themselves with the British gov-
ernment, the situation pointed directly to the notion of “third
space” in postcolonial discourse, which has been described
as “the ‘inter,’ the cutting-edge of translation and negotia-
tion, the in-between.” I have quoted Homi Bhabha‘s point
that the sense of the historical identity of culture as a
homogenizing, unifying force–authenticated by an originary
past, and kept alive in tradition of a culture—is greatly
challenged in the so-called “third space,” in which the
86
colonized group is caught between the traditional culture to
which it had once belonged and the colonial culture (Bhabha
1995, p. 209). This third space had led to the assimilation of
contraries and hybridity, and in the dialectical relationship
was the impulse to reconstruct an independent local identity.
One can see from this development that the Chinese
tradition had recurrently been the center and in a sense the
hegemony in terms of artistic resource and choice. This
tradition had always been the background where artists
referred to or departed from voluntarily or even whole-
heartedly, and many of the traditional signs were appropri-
ated, translated, dehistoricized, and read anew.
In 1960s, the return to tradition might be a strategy to
establish a cultural identity, and assimilation of Chinese and
Western traditions into a new modern tradition became an
useful strategy. This was a natural outcome of the hybrid
identity of Hong Kong artists. Before, a recognizable saying
was, “for the colony’s art, its past is in China, its present is in
Hong Kong, and its future lies in the whole world” (Wong
1975, p. 49). Now the phase has changed to the trinity Hong
Kong-China-the World, with Chinese tradition as the
underlying omniscient base and the hegemony in art and
culture that local Chinese citizens find it favorable and nat-
ural to consent to. This concept has quickly echoed in the
discourses of different areas, discussed in the media and
reached a social consensus. But one should understand that
this would not advocate an irreversible or essential history of
culture.
In recent debates about postcolonial conditions in Hong
Kong, we hear that there is no such thing as an orthodox,
original, or monolithic postcolonial discourse. It has been
suggested that studies should consider the particular contexts
where subjects are situated and the interaction among the
multicultural dimensions with which they are involved. The
unique case of Hong Kong is that after 100 years of British
regime, it was returned to its mother nation, with which it
originally had problems identifying, and with which it
gradually embraced. Recent descriptions of the “third space”
Hong Kong had established between United Kingdom and
China in the past decades include the terms “hybridity,”
“marginality,” and “the (victim) in-between China and the
West.” In 1990s, the situation was complicated by the rec-
ognition that Hong Kong, with its economic and cultural
aggression, had itself become a colonizer of mainland and
overseas Chinese communities in recent years in terms of its
import of popular cultures and other global products.
11 The Trinity of “Hong Kong -China- the World” …
This recognition negates any reductive or essentialistic
descriptions of the cultural and artistic identity of the city.
The growing consciousness of multiple identities, of being
both the colonizer and the colonized, has also questioned the
possibility of an “authentic” nativity of Hong Kong even
when the Chinese root is once again being emphasized.
Writing about native experiences in the context of postco-
lonial reality would still encounter the pressure or expecta-
tion of presenting “differences” or “othernesses.” The
everlasting negotiation of cultural identity, rather than a
national tradition in itself, should be the hegemony in the
real sense; citing once again Gramsci’s meaning that hege-
mony is a “moving equilibrium,” containing relations of
force favorable or unfavorable to this or that tendency and
the leading elements in a particular historic bloc.
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