Bless this trespass

The digital world has shaped our way of living. Everything is just a click away with a smartphone.

This blurring of the virtual and real world is explored in Eaton HK's Tomorrow Maybe group exhibition, No Kids Allowed. The ironic title aims to spur young artists to trespass and occupy forbidden spaces.

With the help of social media, Eaton HK director of culture Joseph Chen picked seven Generation Z local artists whose practices take a dip into virtual reality. He intentionally looked for those who graduated from different institutes, come from different backgrounds and who have their own distinct style.

"People in this generation are against being represented. Instead, they speak up for their feelings bravely on social-media platforms," Chen said. They use the platforms not just to share personal experiences but also for social advocacy, he added.

The artists - Clara Wong, Eric Pang, Jessica Chan, Sam Siu, Sin Wong, and duo Ringo Lo Wing-tao and Michelle Tam Man-ching - fit into this "anti-generation," as Chen called it.

Their online platforms are used to both showcase their art and fragments of lived moments - much like how everyone else posts about their daily life.

Society's tendency to place youth culture into certain categories does not reflect reality, which is more complex than that. So the artists' creations can respond to the misrepresentation or, at least, serve as a record of artistic discourse.

That's why despite its tongue-in-cheek title, the exhibition is a celebration of youthful spirit.

"In these artworks, trespassing is one of the motifs that redefine actual spaces or social expectations," Chen said.

This can be seen in self-taught photographer Sam Siu's photographs and video clips extracted from his Instagram stories. They show everything from his occasional cycling routes to the quality time he spends with friends in the city's forbidden places, ruins and wilderness.

"Ninety-percent of Siu's time spent with friends was for the fun of it, while 10 percent was for actually taking the shots," said Chen.

Siu explained the importance of the ordinary moments spent with friends: "It's all about sharing and going outside. It's about sharing the philosophy of life and dreaming."

Chen calls him the eldest by age but youngest by mind among the artists, which can be seen in how the 31-year-old said the "No kids allowed" sign is a way of keeping youngsters out - " but it also means all kids allowed to me. We do what we like."

For painter Clara Wong, the trespass motif is emphasized in her paintings that extend from their four-sided frames.

"Real life is a frame too. I treat everything beyond the canvas as the extension of a painting itself, be it life or a decent wooden frame," she said. "Take Untitled from 2021 for instance. It is an unintended outcome of the spontaneous intercourse between the environment and the materials that I own. I become the medium that organically conjoins them."

Self-taught 3D artist Eric Pang picked sci-fi as a way to inspire people to explore the unknown. "I love sci-fi as a genre, especially worlds set in a time far away from the present, science can appear like magic," he said.

So he set his video installation, [Object: Phototype], in the year 3094. The video purportedly records a new god's arrival in the distant future to form a new religion - as if people cannot live without one.

But irony lies underneath as Pang said he has a complex relationship with religion. "To me, all religions, beliefs and faiths are just fiction or self-help books that caught on long enough to become part of the world's culture," he said.

No Kids Allowed will be on show until this Sunday at Tomorrow Maybe in Eaton HK.

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