Empty Gallery is pleased to announce our participation in Art|Basel Hong Kong 2022 with a solo presentation of philosopher-filmmaker James T. Hong. Hong’s Three Arguments about the Opium War (2015) is a trenchant inquiry into the contradictory logics and competing narratives which constitute recent East Asian history— and the ways in which these discursive formations continue to determine the course of present-day politics— articulated through the genre of the landscape film.
Drawing on archival research and primary source documents surrounding the titular conflict— including statements by prominent Chinese and British figures— Hong utilizes the formal interplay between multi-channel video and textual intertitles to stage a virtual confrontation between British and Chinese ideologues. Dueling pronouncements such as “it was an instructive war that taught China how to fall in line with civilized European trading norms” and “the entire rise of the West from 1500 to 1900 depended on drug trafficking” are superimposed over footage of present-day Hong Kong— flickering in and out of the viewer’s consciousness over a series of beautifully composed tableaux of the city.
EXTERNAL MANIFESTATIONS
April 23 – November 27, 2022
59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale
Jes Fan, Tishan Hsu
La Biennale di Venezia
May 6 – August 14, 2022
Breaking Water
Jes Fan
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
June 2, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Future Bodies from a Recent Past
Tishan Hsu
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
June 9, 2022
Carrington, the Machine and the Non-Human: Panel Discussion
Tishan Hsu
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia
June 28 – August 6, 2022
First Hand
Jes Fan
Lisson Gallery, New York City
