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Tai Kwun Contemporary presents Stay Connected: Supplying the Globe, the latest installment in its ambitious series Art and China Since 2008. Running until May 31, the exhibition is celebrated for its innovative approaches to digital heritage and performance art.
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Featuring more than 70 artworks by over 40 artists, it moves beyond the digital realm of the first chapter to examine the tangible consequences of China’s role as the global manufacturing and logistics center. It considers how material production continues to underpin the circulation of ideas, values, and artistic exchange.
Spanning three floors of JC Contemporary and F Hall Gallery, one of the city’s most important contemporary art venues, the exhibition explores personal stories, family histories, and overlooked places shaped by globalization and decades of rapid economic growth.
Organized around four themes – environmental impact; forms of work from commercial labor to artistic production; the movement of goods and capital; and the transnational movement of people, materials, and ideas – the exhibition reflects on how these forces reshape societies and relationships.
Carefully curated, the exhibition invites audiences to consider how creativity intersects with technology and shifting economic realities, using installation, live performance and participatory works to reveal the environmental, labor and migratory systems that structure contemporary life. Several new works have been commissioned, including pieces by Mark Chung, Ocean Leung, and Li Yifan. The exhibition also showcases contributions from artists and collectives offering perspectives from across Greater China and the broader international arena.
Beyond the galleries, Tai Kwun is expanding the conversation through a symposium, curatorial talks, family programs, and a companion publication produced with Asia Art Archive.
Supported by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust and Hawk HE – Octone Foundation, this exhibition provides a broad reflection on resilience, reciprocity, and interdependence during a period of economic change, encouraging audiences to reconsider the material and cultural networks that connect modern societies in an era of economic uncertainty.
The exhibition’s scale and ambition, set within Tai Kwun’s landmark heritage complex and complemented by its vibrant public programs, make it well worth visiting.
Bernard Charnwut Chan is the chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District
