In this workshop Hong Kong-based researcher Michelle Wong considered the intersection of two archive collections at Asia Art Archive, namely the Out of Context collection and the Ha Bik Chuen collection.  The Ha Bik Chuen collection encompasses a wide range of digitized material, including documentation of numerous exhibitions that took place  in Hong Kong from the 1960s-2000s. The Out of Context collection focuses on a single short-lived self-organized exhibition that took place in Hong Kong in 1987. Distinguishing the Out of Context collection are oral interviews with the exhibition’s participants.

This workshop shared the development of these archiving projects and explore the kinds of research tools they created. By considering these archive projects as inquiries into how to research and write art history, Wong asks: what is the role of exhibitions? What do they do? And where and how do artist biographies fit?

Michelle Wun Ting Wong is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Hong Kong, exploring the modernity emerging from Post WWII Hong Kong. From 2012–20 she was a researcher at Asia Art Archive (AAA), focusing on Hong Kong art history and histories of exchange and circulation through exhibitions and periodicals. She curated Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys at Tai Kwun Contemporary (2021), and was part of the curatorial teams for Yokohama Triennale 2020, and the 11th Edition of Gwangju Biennale (2016). Her writing has been published in Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945–1990 (2018), the journal Southeast of Now (2019) amongst others.

Related collections:

Here is the list of publications selected for this workshop by Michelle Wong:

Ha Bik Chuen Archive/夏碧泉檔案

Hong Kong Art: Culture and Decolonization

Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance

Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook 2009/香港視覺藝術年鑑 2009

Hong Kong Art History Research Pilot Project/香港藝術史研究先導項目

Not as Trivial as You Think: Hong Kong Art Quiz

HK Lab/香港實驗室

Someone Else’s Story – Our Footnotes: Contemporary Art of Hong Kong (1990-1999)/他人的故事 – 我們的註腳: 香港當代藝術研究 (1990-1999)

Driving Lantau: Whisper of an Island/大山與人

Art and Place: Essays on Art From a Hong Kong Perspective

Ellen Pau: What about Home Affairs? – A Retrospective/當家當當家：鮑藹倫回顧展

Fragments of Future Histories

Fotan Wilson Shieh Cultural Palace/火炭石家豪文化宮

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.