Hong Kong Artists Mark 25Th Venice Biennale Anniversary Through Everyday Details

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Hong Kong-born artists Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui are presenting installations that focus on overlooked moments and subtle connections between Hong Kong and Venice in their exhibition,“Fermata: Hong Kong in Venice.” The show, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's inaugural participation in the Venice Biennale, is curated by the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and will remain on view until November 22, 2026. Housed in a historic residential building in Venice's Campo della Tana neighborhood, the setting underscores the works' meditative and lived-in qualities.

Dr. Maria Mok, director of the HKMoA, stated that the museum hopes visitors gain a moment of reflection from the exhibition.“Through Kingsley and Angel's attention to everyday details, we hope visitors feel invited to slow down and become more attentive to their surroundings, even within the hustle and intensity of urban life,” Mok said.

Ng's installation, Laundry Nocturne (2026), features a projection and soundscape designed to evoke light playing across laundry hung between buildings. The artist drew inspiration from his visits to Venice, where billowing clotheslines are common, while also recalling memories of Hong Kong.

“The laundry becomes a point of entry into a wider soundscape of nighttime labour: recordings from a wastewater treatment plant, a newspaper-printing facility and a postal sorting centre evoke the work that continues while much of the city sleeps,” Ng explained. He added that these modest, often overlooked processes that keep a city alive do not only connect Venice and Hong Kong.“They are like a low hum in almost every city, to be picked up by an ear that doesn't only listen to loud grandeur.”

Hui's installations highlight ordinary aspects of daily life in Hong Kong, such as goldfish in plastic bags and a neighbor's elaborate, faded window frame. Her work features glowing plastic bags embroidered with goldfish motifs suspended overhead, alongside a handwrought iron window created by Hui and traditional metalsmiths, which slowly rotates in the gallery.

“In Hong Kong, a goldfish bag is an everyday object; in Venice, it seemed almost precious, delicate and exposed,” Hui commented.“The experience reminded me that a work does not need to be grand to hold meaning. Sometimes, its poetry lies in inviting us to look more attentively, and to meet the familiar with tenderness.”

The artists' site-specific installations encourage visitors to pause and heighten their awareness of details like light, sound, color, and texture. This contemplative invitation is mirrored in the exhibition's title, Fermata, a musical symbol instructing a performer to hold a note or a pause, and also a term for Venice's vaporetto stops. Hui noted that the title and its dual meanings resonate across the exhibition's distinct locations.

“The difference in pace is pronounced: Hong Kong often presses forward, while Venice seems to make room for pause,” Hui observed.“This is why Fermata, a moment of stopping, of stillness, felt so resonant. In both cities, the ordinary endures, and in that endurance, everyday objects acquire a quiet radiance.” The exhibition's title and installations also align with the theme of this year's Venice Biennale,“In Minor Keys,” set by the late curator Koyo Kouoh.

Ng views the works as experiences to revisit and coexist with. He shared,“For me, that is one meaning of In Minor Keys: making time for the ordinary and immediate, the air, light and weather around us, and becoming more attentive to our presence within them.” The artists' skill in transforming familiar objects and moments into scenes where time seems to slow and senses are heightened is central to the exhibition's impact, allowing their installations to connect diverse locales from the Venetian Lagoon to Hong Kong's urban landscape.

Dr. Mok noted that the artworks merge into the Venetian neighborhood, from laundry hanging across nearby alleys and above the courtyard exhibition space to the view outside Kingsley's Laundry Nocturne gallery, and wrought-iron windows that echo Angel's work.“All these details are blurring the boundary between the exhibition and its surroundings. They also show how small moments of daily life can quietly synchronise across different cities and audiences,” she concluded. The exhibition is located at Campo della Tana, Castello 2126, 30122, Venice.

Source: The Art Newspaper

MENAFN04112026005694012507ID1111917703