Hong Kong artist Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai's artworks adorn iconic tram facades

215
3
Hong Kong artist Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai's artworks adorn iconic tram facades

Digital images of Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai's artworks Lingering Clouds I and II adorn the facades of a Hong Kong tram. This edition of Art Basel Hong Kong ABHK is local artist Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai's first time participating in the international fair. It is the first time that her work is being displayed in a huge format, namely, on the outside of a tram.

Cheuk is one of three artists - along with landscape painter Stephen Wong Chun-hei and Chinese ink artist Sim Shum Kwan-yi - who are participating in the Artist Tram Project, a collaboration of Hong Kong Art Week 2022. Three special trams have been turned into moving canvases that meandering along Hong Kong Island until May 29th, co-presented by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

Digital images of Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai's artworks Lingering Clouds I and II adorn the facades of a Hong Kong tram. Adeline Ooi, Asia's director of Art Basel, says the experimental project gave the artists a chance to work with a new surface.

It felt like it was a natural step to invite local Hong Kong artists to respond to the iconic trams. In some ways, I ask myself, Why didn't we think of this earlier? She said that the artists interpretations of the city pair well with the iconic mode of transport.

Collaboration with organizations in Hong Kong is a key to creating meaningful connections in the city and across the globe. Ooi says we are so excited to be able to support a group of Hong Kong artists on this special project. It is part of our aim to connect local art with a wider audience, as part of our aim to celebrate the Hong Kong art scene. Sim Shum Kwan-yi's enigmatic Why You Always Be Here and Watch. Originally scheduled for a showcasing in March when ABHK would have taken place, the pieces were commissioned in November. Following submission, the artworks were turned into a high-resolution image and digitally adjusted to fit the tram's facade, taking into account windows and doors.

Wong's contribution to the project depicts Star Ferry surfing Katsushika Hokusai's most iconic woodblock print. Shum executed a cryptic work on paper with ink, color and silver leaf titled Why You Always Be Here and Watch, while Cheuk applied two paintings from her latest ink-on-silk collection onto her tram. The series is themed around local bird species and features retro Hong Kong details like a vintage toy and game and mosaic tiles typical of Hong Kong teahouses.

Stephen Wong Chun-hei fuses Star Ferry with Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. The whole series looks at birds we often see in Hong Kong, such as the tree sparrow and red-whiskered bulbul, alongside silhouettes of local wildlife like a monkey, wild boar and buffalo, the artist explains. The line between urban and rural is very thin in Hong Kong. The city is close to nature by having these animals traverse the city on a tram. Cheuk believes she was chosen to take part in the project because of her prowess in injecting the techniques of traditional Chinese ink painting into her works. Her five-part series, Lingering Clouds, can be seen at the Alisan Fine Arts booth at Art Basel.

The ABHK has a tradition of running ancillary public events. For the third edition of the fair in 2015, mainland multimedia artist Cao Fei lit up the International Commerce Centre with images of retro arcade games such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Two years later, Hong Kong artist Kingsley Ng's Twenty-Five Minutes Older created an altered version of reality in which passengers on two public trams — repurposed as camera obscuras — were shown reversed images of the city during their ride.