Wong Ping is one of the most eccentric artists of our time… Probably, this is because he grew up in a very eccentric city called Hong Kong, trapped in an even more eccentric time that is called postcolonial-neocolonial transition. Now there is an urgent need to deal with an all the more eccentric ‘new age’, strangely called ‘Covid and post/neo-Covid’ that is turning the world into a generally eccentric place. Or you could call it an innovative ecology of life.
How can we face this new age? Wong Ping likes to take his cues from the daily news, because there are plenty of eccentric stories there. Inspired by an eye-catching story of ‘cultural expression’, a gesture of resistance against urban gentrification, that took place in the new ‘Fatherland’ (the latter has been increasingly imposing its authority on Ping’s city) —the owner of an old building in Shanghai, widely dubbed the ‘nail house’, had covered its exterior with posters of the national leader, in the hope of putting a stop to the bulldozers coming in—the artist decided to plaster posters of his own face and the back of his head processed in a dizzy, overlapped fashion on the front and back of the TACB… (What a useful talisman! Perhaps the building where the TACB is located will now stay forever even though Berlin is becoming more and more gentrified!)
Then we are led into the galleries: it’s another eccentric trip into Ping’s head, or, more precisely, into his ‘inner world’ through an ear canal… A journey of seeking truth, and thus of happiness. Once inside, we are greeted by what Ping reminds us: ‘What has succeeded in filtering through the eardrum is all bullshit. Earwax is the only real wisdom’!
And then, our heads are struck by a vague yet crisp sound from the inside… It’s light, ‘poetic’, somewhat chaotic, and even uncontrollably erotic… The space suddenly turns transparent, but it also locks us in. This is perhaps an antechamber to Plato’s Cave, where what one sees are merely shadows of the actual things. Here, in the antechamber, one only sees things without shadows. So, which one is the real world?
From Hong Kong, Ping sends us greetings, somewhat intimately, via the secret canal – his ears are now connected to ours. Is there a hole to some fresh air out there, on the other side of the world, in this ‘pandemic new age’?
We are falling in love with Ping… It’s time to reread El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Gabriel Garcia Márquez).
9 December 2021* Hou Hanru •••
Hou Hanru is a prolific writer and curator based in Rome, Paris and San Francisco. He is currently Artistic Director of MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture), Rome.
Hou Hanru has curated and co-curated over 100 exhibitions for last three decades across the world including: China/Avant-Garde, National Museum of Art of China, Beijing, 1989; Cities On The Move, 1997–2000; Shanghai Biennale, 2000; Gwangju Biennale, 2002; Venice Biennale, French Pavilion, 1999; Venice Biennale, Z.O.U. – Zone Of Urgency, 2003, Chinese Pavilion, 2007; The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2005; The 10th Istanbul Biennial, 2007; Trans(cient)City, Luxembourg, 2007; The 10th Biennale de Lyon, 2009; The 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013; Open Museum Open City, MAXXI, Rome, 2014;Transformers – Choi Jeong-hwa, Didier Fuiza Faustino, Martino Gamper, Pedro Reyes, MAXXI, Rome, 2015-2016; Please Come Back, the world as prison?, MAXXI, Rome, 2017; Home Beirut, MAXXI, 2017-2018; The Street, Where the World is Made, MAXXI, Rome, 2018; Growing in Difference, the 7thShenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture, UABB 2017-2018, The D-Tale – Video art from the Pearl River Delta, Times Art Center, Berlin, 2018; A Story for the Future, MAXXI’s first decade, MAXXI, Rome, 2021; Usage of Uselessness, Times Art Museum, Guangzhou, 2021.
He is an advisor for numerous cultural institutions including Times Museum, Guangzhou, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York. He frequently contributes to various journals on contemporary art and culture and lectures and teaches in numerous international institutions. His books include “Hou Hanru”, (Utopia@Asialink, and School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, 2014), “On the Mid-Ground” (English version published in 2002, by Timezone 8, Hong Kong, and Chinese version published in 2013, by Gold Wall Press, Beijing), “Curatorial Challenges” (conversations between Hou Hanru and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, in “Art-It magazine” as “curators on the move”, Japan, 2006-2012, Chinese version, Gold Wall Press, Beijing, 2013).
* This project can be considered as “Operation Delta #5” of the Guangdong Times Museum, curated by Hou Hanru. However, the Pearl River Delta has now officially been renamed the Great Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau; a new Silicon Valley, quite desperately seeking its legitimacy as a new master of the globalised world…
Watch the exhibition video for Earwax 耳屎
Murmurs leak from someone’s ear. It’s the echo created by the excess of a bunch of unpleasant words that have been blocked from the eardrum. Those that made it through are simply nonsense, only the earwax remain as wisdom. Do not rush to pick the wax out or to probe with a cotton swab. When you drive the cotton into a corner, The resistance of oppressed cotton is not something that you can survive.
Don’t you disgrace your parents if you can’t even withstand a tiny bit of itchiness? Wait till the wax fall and land on your shoulders like eggs bursting out of fish bellies, that’s when you can harvest all you want.
Oh and yes, my eardrum was already ruptured before marriage, do you mind?
Earwax Wong Ping •••
Wong Ping, b. 1984 in Hong Kong, lives and works in Hong Kong.
Through animation, sculpture, and immersive installations, Wong Ping creates disturbing and crude narratives that challenge conventional concepts of human desire, obsession, shame, isolation, and repressed sexuality. Wong’s videos take on a bright and childlike aesthetic, creating a light-hearted, humorous, and accessible approach to the deep psychological issues experienced by the protagonists in his films. As a Hong Kong native, many of Wong’s works reference the culture of the city, but also touch upon everyday problems which transverse physical borders in today’s globalized society.
Wong Ping received his BA from Curtin University, Perth, Australia in 2005. In 2018, he was the recipient of the inaugural Camden Arts Centre Emerging Arts Prize at Frieze, and in 2019, he was one of the winners of The Ammodo Tiger Short Competition at the 48th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Wong’s solo exhibitions include Your Silent Neighbor, New Museum, New York (2021); Heart Digger, Camden Arts Centre, London (2019); Golden Shower, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2019); Who’s the Daddy, CAPRI, Düsseldorf, Germany; and Jungle of Desire, Things that can happen, Hong Kong. His work has been featured in group exhibitions such as One Hand Clapping, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2018); 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage, New Museum, New York (2018); RareKind China, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); and Mobile M+: Moving Images, M+, Hong Kong (2015). Wong’s animation films have been presented at numerous international festivals, in Belgium, United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia.
Wong’s work is held in several permanent collections including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; M+, Hong Kong; KADIST, Paris/San Francisco; Fosun Art Foundation, Shanghai, among others.
