Focus on Arts and Ecology

25 May – 13 Sep 2020
Tai Kwun Contemporary
Hong Kong

From the organizer:

They Do Not Understand Each Other draws its title from the artwork by Tsubasa Kato of two figures performing a task together while not comprehending a word uttered by the other. Set on the Tsushima islands that lie between Korea and Japan, their successful cooperation appears to have been achieved, if not by virtue of good humour and patience, then by an understanding that exceeds the plane of language.

Presenting artworks from the National Museum of Art, Osaka (NMAO) and the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), as well as new commissions, the exhibition considers the negotiations and expectations of culture. After all, if the premise of culture is representation, then the promise of cultural exchange — one might reasonably suppose—is understanding.

Artists: Saori Akutagawa (Madokoro), Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Agnes Arellano, chi too, Heman Chong, Chua Chye Teck, Ho Tzu Nyen, Sojung Jun, Tsubasa Kato, Charles Lim, Kumi Machida, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Wit Pimkanchanapong, Kohei Sekigawa, Kazuo Shiraga, Akira Takayama, Than Sok, Ming Wong

Curators: Yuka Uematsu & June Yap

Through these artworks, a range of connections—and thus the possibilities of understanding—are manifest, in various forms as well as intensities. They speak to boundaries, borders, gaps, spaces, surfaces, interfaces, and divisions that exist because of—for lack of a better word—an unevenness in encounters between individuals, peoples, and things. Such unevenness is inevitable, and from this unevenness, curiosity in the unfamiliar and the new springs forth, as well as the impulse to discover. In fact, one might even say that cultural experience is couched upon this encounter and the disclosure that follows.

Here, the artists appear as mediators and actants, in “doing” things for their artists as much as for the rest of us, in acting to intercede, to reconcile, and to act as go-between. In forming continuities between us, they make us part of each other—delivering upon a promise of understanding in a continuous entwining of material, being, space, and time.

The programme has been suspended until further notice. Thank you for your understanding. You still can view the exhibition through virtual tour