The 37th Hong Kong Arts Festival: Pirouetting peonies and other artful adventures

Maybe it is the Hui Quan beer, or maybe the waft of French cigar smoke, but I swear I am seeing melted Coke and 7-Up bottles side by side with bronze heads. Surreally jarring, yes; alarming, no. For I am in the studio of sculptor Wong Chun Wing in a commune called the Cattle Depot Artists Village in Hong Kong’s Kowloon area, and everything — from sculptures to found objects, from snapshots of cats to boxes of Valentine chocolates — has its own strangely alluring history.

Even the place itself has its own interesting story to tell: as the name suggests, it used to be the condominium of cows (to put it mildly), which has now been turned to clusters of 19 low-rise squats that artists in Hong Kong can rent relatively cheaply, so that they can work on their oeuvres in peace without landlords breathing down their necks; a laudable initiative by the Hong Kong government. Another such place is the Jockey Club Creative Arts Center (JCCAC), which is housed in what used to be a nine-story factory building in the ’70s. With the support of the government and the Jockey Club Charities Trust, the center was launched by the Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Arts Development, and the Hong Kong Arts Center “to provide studio space and venues for local artists and art groups, and to nurture creative arts talent, thereby contributing to the promotion of arts and culture in Hong Kong.”  

You could just imagine the events they have — exhibitions, happenings, interactions, and live art — at the Cattle Depot and the Jockey Club artists’ communes. Remarkable housing projects we will never see in our own shores because of our government officials whose only muse is money.

Wong Chun Wing — who most people call “Wing Ko,” meaning “brother” — is telling me in Cantonese (with the very efficient tour guide Frederic Cheung acting as translator) about the life of the artist in Hong Kong. He speaks authoritatively. One can tell right away how strong his hands are as he waves them, uses them to peel an orange, fondle a cat. Those hands work with heavy metal every day, bending and hammering them into angel wings, tin men, or even a sculpture of a fist giving the dirty finger. But my mind wanders to the objects inside his Cattle No. 1 studio, not dissimilar to the chaos of bits and pieces inside Picasso’s studio in Spain, which I saw in an old Reader’s Digest feature. Despite its cacophony of objects, everything was in its right place in Picasso’s world. Same with Wong. Well, same with Hong Kong where artistic diversity holds sway.

Eclectic is the operative word in this year’s artistic festivities. Hong Kong is not just an ideal place for shopping — where the girls get their LVs and the men splurge at HMV (or sometimes, the other way around). Hong Kong is a thriving place for art and culture, not surprising at all since the country is a crossroads of sorts for Easterners and Westerners. The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) invited The STAR to experience the 37th incarnation of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, with a diverse and exciting lineup of performances and exhibitions from both East and West. From the National Ballet of China’s The Peony Pavilion, to a rhythmic reading of Alice in Wonderland by the English National Ballet. From the Latvian National Opera’s recasting of Shakespeare (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), to the Vsturport and Lyric Hammersmith’s regurgitation of Kafka (Metamorphosis). From Wang Jian playing Bach, to Chick Corea and John McLaughlin playing Miles. 

There is something for everybody, broadly speaking.

“The HKTB’s goal is to strengthen Hong Kong’s appeal as the ‘Events Capital of Asia,’” explains HKTB public relations senior executive Judy Yam. (She adds that aside from the Arts Festival, the tourism board also provides marketing support all year round to events such as the Salsa Festival, International Film Festival, Sevens rugby tournament, International Dragon Boat Regatta, and the upcoming East Asian Games.) 

Another good thing about this trip is that HKTB leaves no stone unturned in making journalists see and feel how exciting Hong Kong is during art season. The museums and galleries are aglow with exhibitions by classical and contemporary Chinese artists. The clubs and cultural centers are radiated by resplendent costumes, sound-tracked by lilting music. And the peripherals are equally great.

A Benz limo takes me around the city with Fred as color commentator. There are tea breaks in a café dedicated to a famous singer named Teresa Teng (imagine a Nora Aunor coffee and tea place) and drinks at Lan Kwai Fong; quick stops at Chinese fast food joints, as well as long lunches and dinners at plush restaurants such as The Pawn or OVOlogue in old Wanchai with its dramatic interiors, and Bo Innovation with its foie gras crème brulee and caviar and Guns-N’-Roses-T-shirt-wearing chef Alvin Leung (fondly called the “demon chef,” an audio engineer who’s into “extreme Chinese cuisine”). When Anthony Bourdain visited Bo Innovation, he was reportedly served meat and rice ice cream, Szechuan lobster in dumpling skin, gummies made from flowers, egg tarts and passion fruit. I bet you Bourdain waxed poetic about that meal.

Before the trip ends I will get a chance to watch a salsa festival, have my picture taken with Hitler, Picasso and Einstein — their facsimiles in wax, I mean — at Madame Tussauds (with its newest attractions, President Barack Obama and the Scream-Escape the Asylum room where scary, masked figures chase the bejesus out of you), and visit Art Jamming paint house. Here, customers just pay around 400 Hong Kong dollars to get a canvas, access to containers upon containers of acrylic paint and a space where they could do their impressions of Pollock or Basquiat to their heart’s delight. And oh, they can even bring home their paintings in protective Art Jamming boxes. Thus they can lug around their still lifes or landscapes (or in my case, a smiling skull) in the Hong Kong metro without fear of the wet paint getting smudged and thus ruining the future of their lot at Sotheby’s or Christie’s.   

But the best thing about the festival is to be able to watch the shows and get the chance to meet artists such as Wing Ko.

The sculptor has been offered staggering amounts of money for his sculptures. Collectors show up in his doorsteps bearing bagfuls of Hong Kong dollars, but he turned them away. Wing Ko explains, as translated by Cheung, “To do art just to be famous or to be a millionaire is not the point. Money cannot buy the peace in your heart.” He finds fulfillment in the process itself, the freewheeling feeling of creating art out of nothing. He earns his daily bread by teaching sculpture to children as young as three to four years old.

“I want to help kids discover art for themselves,” Wing Ko says. “The key is to get your own joy in your own art.” 

And for a couple of weeks, that is precisely what the people in Hong Kong experience because of the Arts Festival: art for all, art becoming a part of everyday life along with shopping and good cuisine. As it should be, what the artists living in Cattle Depot or the Jockey Club, or the members of the National Ballet of China or the Five Peace Band, in fact believe.

Wing Ko opens another can of Hui Quan beer, more ideas brewing in his head.

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Special thanks to the Hong Kong Tourism Board’s Judy Yam and Fred Cheung, and Perceptions.