Institutions, Venice
Angela Su
Arise
Hong Kong in VeniceAngela Su’s presentation at the Biennale Arte 2022 conveys a speculative narrative through interlocking fictional perspectives. The act of levitation serves as an organising metaphor that reappears throughout Su's drawings, moving images, embroideries, and installations. The artist assumes the guise of a fictional alter-ego to explore myriad cultural and political valences of rising in the air. The world Su creates in Arise is an assemblage of various contemporary expressions of how an individual can confront a changed and changing world. Fiction allows us to create this hybrid world, a space where we can explore ideas that cannot be confronted directly. Angela Su: Arise, Hong Kong in Venice, is co-presented and co-promoted by M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District, and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Angela Su’s works investigate the perception and imagery of the body, through metamorphosis, hybridity and transformation. Her research-based projects materialise in drawing, video, hair embroidery, performative and installation works, which explore the interrelations between our state of being and the advancement of technology. Central to these projects are video essays and texts that weave together fiction and facts, reality and fantasy. With focus on the history of medical science, her works question the dominant biomedical discourse, and contemplate the impact of technology on the past, present and future. Freya Chou is a Hong Kong-based curator and editor. She was part of the Taipei Biennial (2008, 2010) curatorial team and was Co-Curator of the Shanghai Biennial (2014). She worked at Para Site, Hong Kong, as its first Education and Public Programmes Curator (2015 to 2019). Chou curated Ellen Pau: What About Home Affairs? —A Retrospective (2018); Chris Evans, Pak Sheung Chuen: Two Exhibitions (2017); and Afterwork (co-curator, 2016) and has worked with Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. She has edited and contributed to artists’ books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues, and is a member of the 58th Carnegie International’s Curatorial Council.